Declining Crypto Market

The crypto currency market endured another relatively negative weekend with a slow decline across all major coins with some notable exceptions. Bitcoin continued the slow decline that began on Wednesday and was trading at around $9400 at press time - around 20% down from its interim high of almost $12000 and there appears to be selling pressure at the $9,000 mark. Although the expiration of the futures contract on Friday appears to have contributed to the decline in price, other factors seem to be affecting Bitcoin's ability to recover to its previous highs which now seem to be a long way off.

Bitcoin Cash also suffered a precipitous decline and was trading at around $1120 at press time, almost 30% down from its interim high of $1500 also achieved last week. Although this innovative currency seemed to be moving in inverse position to legacy Bitcoin in its initial stages with huge highs being achieved when BTC was down this has not continued and with every Bitcoin decline, BCH declines too.

One of the few bright spots in all this carnage was Litecoin which saw a 9% per cent rise over the weekend having dropped to a low of around $193 on Friday. It was trading at $210-220 at press time and looks poised to achieve a boost along this week if there is further good news especially with the Litepay announcement that took place recently.

Another positive mover was Ethereum Classic which also saw a price rise of around 10% over the weekend after having dropped considerably on Thursday and Friday. In fact the ETC token was trading at around $35-36 on Sunday before dropping back to the $33 levels early Monday indicating that it was struggling to hold on to its recent price levels. Ethereum had a relatively quiet weekend overall and settled at the $810-830 mark with no indication that it was going to break these price levels anytime soon.

Of the other major crypto currencies, Ripple continued to disappoint and is now well below the $1 mark trading between $0.86 and $0.93 and it is seemingly stuck there for the foreseeable future. There does not seem to be the volume or the momentum for this currency to even approach its all-time highs reached last December and its market cap has continued shrinking to around $37 billion now, almost 150% down from its highest levels. The other top ten currencies with smaller market caps also saw some declines with Stellar Lumens particularly disappointing. After reaching around $0.49 just a week ago, this currency has slumped almost 30% to the $0.33 level and appears to be falling further. Neo has also dropped to the low $110's after having traded at around $130 last week whilst Dash has once again dropped to below $600 and was trading at around $570 at press time. The latest correction has shaved another 30% off prices and the short term future appears rather bleak although an upside could also be in the offing. Major crypto currencies have struggled to sustain their upward momentum secured earlier this week, on February 23. Bitcoin has fallen below the $10,000 mark again, while Ethereum's native cryptocurrency Ether has struggled to spike above $900.

Earlier this year, the dominance index of bitcoin reached an all-time low at around 32 percent. Throughout the recovery period in February, the dominance index of bitcoin, which measures its dominance over the global cryptocurrency market, rose significantly, to around 39 percent, as most cryptocurrencies in the market followed the price trend of bitcoin.

While bitcoin has performed better than Ethereum, tokens, and other major cryptocurrencies in the market in the past month given that it has increased by nearly two-fold since dipping to $6,100, it has been extremely volatile. After the initial bear cycle and slump in January, analysts expected the price of bitcoin to start recovering to its previous levels by late February. But, bitcoin has continued to move in between the $9,500 and $11,000 range, without major buy volumes or rallies to push its price to $12,00 and potentially to early January levels in the $14,000 to $15,000 range. All the talk of BTC reaching the $20,000 mark by March have evaporated into smoke with the crypto currency not even at half that level at the moment.

Many traders have expressed their concerns over the short-term performance of bitcoin, primarily because of its low volume and the sudden spike in the daily trading volume of Tether, a US dollar-backed cryptocurrency, which traders on major cryptocurrency trading platforms like Binance use to hedge the value of major cryptocurrencies. The implementation of the Segwit protocol by Coinbase does not appear to have had any major effect on the price either which seems caught in a downward slump. Other crypto currencies have followed suit and continue to perform badly with no short term end in sight to this downturn.