With a growing influx of optimism, hype, and the next wave of newcomers in the cryptoeconomy, markets around cryptocurrencies are heating up.
On Friday, the bitcoin price ended the week by bursting through $10,000 USD, rising by around $700 USD intraday according to Messari as it settled around $10,150 for the evening. BTC has since gone on to reach a high of $10,800, just $200 short of our Analyst, Nikola Lazic’s prediction yesterday.
Notably, the June 21st spike has powered BTC to its best price so far in 2019, putting “digital gold” up 60 percent since this point last year. The genesis cryptocurrency is now up 156 percent over the last three months and up a whopping 1,593 percent over the last five years. Above $10,000, bitcoin is approximately halfway to its December 2017 all-time price high of $20,000.
The acute rally is, of course, only the latest nail in the coffin against naysayers’ arguments that bitcoin would descend into obscurity or even worthlessness after the 2018 cryptoeconomy bear market reared its head.
Looking Back, Looking Ahead
Likely driving the uptrend is Libra, the cryptocurrency that social media giant Facebook formally announced earlier this week. As debate has exploded around Libra in both crypto and mainstream circles, Bitcoin has naturally been brought to the fore as the biggest blockchain with the biggest native cryptocurrency.
Libra has cryptocurrencies front and center. Image via DataLight
There are those, like Gemini exchange co-founder Tyler Winklevoss, who think FOMO — “fear on missing out” purchases — will boost the bitcoin price up to $15,000 in short order if buy pressure can keep bitcoin past the $10,000 mark decisively in the coming days.
If bitcoin breaks 10k, you can bet it’s going to break 15k…
— Tyler Winklevoss (@tylerwinklevoss) June 19, 2019
That’s a very optimistic projection, to be sure, but such rapid movement wouldn’t be unprecedented. When bitcoin first hit $10,000 in November 2017, it took less than two weeks for FOMO to nudge the cryptocurrency’s price past $15,000.
There’s no telling if that same trajectory will play itself out once more in 2019, but it’s certainly possible with the latest Bitcoin halvening now just months away and the realized capitalization of BTC recently suggesting a bull run was in its early stages.
It's kind of mind boggling how powerful Realized Cap is. The simplest trading strategy – buy when market cap goes below realized cap – gives you insanely good signals. Just… infrequently. https://t.co/kKbHv88xgj pic.twitter.com/3GCKXK2f6u
— nic carter (@nic__carter) June 19, 2019
In any case, Bitcoin has been the beneficiary of several intriguing 2019 headlines.
So far this year, Microsoft has announced work on a decentralized identity (DID) tool that will be underpinned by Bitcoin, while mesh networkers GoTenna have spun off a subsidiary to actualize decentralized comms powered by bitcoin micropayments.
On the enterprise front, forthcoming cryptocurrency exchange Bakkt — which is owned by New York Stock Exchange owner-operators ICE — is preparing to test its much-hyped bitcoin futures product this July. As for CME Group, their bitcoin futures offering set new records in May.
Zooming out, the technical horizon seems to be coming together for Bitcoin too, as its proposed second-layer scaling, the Lightning Network, is maturing all the while.
Ethereum Hits 2019 Price Milestone, Too
Ether, the figurative fuel of the Ethereum network, also spiked on Friday to its highest price yet this year.
The ether (ETH) price spiked more than 10 percent on the day, pushing the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap up as high as $305, where its price hovered for a while.
That still puts ether down 39 percent since this time last year and down 79 percent from its all-time high ($1,431), though the crypto is up 117 percent over the last quarter. Ethereum, like Bitcoin, has been enjoying plenty of positive headlines as of late.
For example, Cloud networking powerhouse Cloudfare just created its own Ethereum Gateway, only days after the Google Cloud team showed how Ethereum could be used to make hybrid “blockchain-cloud” apps. In the mean time, major firms like JP Morgan and EY are building out Ethereum tools.
The smart contract platform is on the verge of evolving to its next stage, too. Ethereum’s builders are eyeing January 3rd, 2020, as a target date for launching the ETH 2.0 genesis block.
The post Crypto Bullish: Bitcoin BTC & Ethereum’s Ether Smash Highest Prices of 2019 appeared first on Blockonomi.
June 22, 2019 at 02:47AM https://blockonomi.com from Blockonomi http://bit.ly/2WS7eaM
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