Alt Coins On The Rise, Bitcoin Appears Slightly Stuck

As the New Year was ushered in, the day was slightly mixed as regards crypto currencies with some showing impressive gains whilst others languished behind and traded mostly sideways. The most impressive gainer at this stage was Ethereum Classic which was up to $32 or an increase of 15% over 24 hours although there was a slight drop of around 3% early on Tuesday morning as some profit taking was apparent.

After days of languishing in the low $200's, Litecoin finally posted an impressive gain on Monday night rising by at least 10% to breach the $250 level. It settled back to a 6% rise on Tuesday but the increase bodes well for those who invested heavily at all-time highs since a recovery of sorts appears to be going on here. Another huge gainer was Ethereum which is now trading at around $850 with the $900 mark appearing also to be in sight. Ripple settled slightly from its astonishing all time high of $2.50 a few days ago but is now solidly gaining and as at Tuesday morning it was breaching the $2.15 mark and rising at around 4%.

Other crypto currency performances were mixed. Dash rose slightly by around 5% and kept building on its gains where it is now trading at around $1,100 whilst Bitcoin Cash appears to be stuck in the $2,300-2,400 mark, well below the highs of $3,500-$4,000 achieved a couple of weeks ago.

Bitcoin appeared sluggish and at one point had dropped below the $13,000 mark on Monday but it recovered and steadily rallied to trade at around $14,500 but then dropped to the $14,000 mark on Tuesday morning.

Overall the increase was positive for the total crypto currency coin market cap which rose to around $600 billion on Monday, confirming the massive increases of the past weeks albeit with corrections priced in.

The only sluggish performer on Monday was Ripple which posted a decline of about 8% to dip below the historic $2 mark at one point. Certain exchanges still had the price at around $2.25 but the average continued to register at around $2.

Interestingly other rising crypto currencies had a slightly mixed performance. Following ripple's example, both Bitcoin cash and Cardano posted minor declines for the day, dipping one percent and three percent, respectively. The Litecoin price, meanwhile, returned a three percent increase, putting at least a temporary halt to its recent downtrend as already explained earlier.

The IOTA price managed to assemble a one percent increase, and NEM's eight percent leap brought its price above dollar parity. The Dash price, meanwhile, rose by two percent, ensuring its status above the $1,000 mark.

The day's top performance came from stellar, a newcomer to the top 10. The stellar price rose 25 percent to $0.42, bringing its market cap to $7.4 billion and providing it with a $2 billion edge on 11th-ranked Monero which has posted some declines of late.