The day continues on the trail of the previous ones by maintaining a negative trend, in which the decreasing prices of Ethereum and Ripple stand out.
Since December 5th, the whole sector has not given any comforting signal. Yesterday’s sinking, at 6.30 PM UTC, saw a sharp drop that seems to be attributed to the Plus Token scandal, consisting in the laundering of cryptocurrencies stolen with the Ponzi scheme perpetrated in Asia.
Yesterday evening saw strong downward movements that in a matter of minutes saw Bitcoin drop by 6%. More serious is the sinking of Ethereum which has fallen over 8% and continues to lose 6-7% even in these hours, continuing in the wake of the strong weakness that has been affecting ETH since last June.
As a result, the weekly loss goes over 10%, with prices that in these hours go below the lows of late November updating the lowest level since last March in the $130 area.
For Ethereum the situation becomes even more critical, especially because, for six months now, prices have not given any sign of an upward reaction. This is despite the recent Istanbul hard fork, which, as planned in the Ethereum network development roadmap, seems to have been successful, but it has not been positive for the market.
It’s a decidedly negative context also for Ripple which goes below 20 cents of a dollar. With the sinking occurred during these last hours, the price of Ripple pushes to test the 19 cents with a drop of more than 8% and prices that go to review the levels of November 2017. More than two years of increases are swept away for Ripple, which is in serious difficulty with regard to the long-term structure.
The general context today sees 90% of cryptocurrencies in negative territory. The only positive sign is that of Tezos (XTZ), which continues to secure its 10th position after having undermined Stellar, 200 million dollars away. Tezos rose by 5% and kept its prices close to the absolute historical highs, but it seemed to find it difficult to break the threshold of 1.80 dollars, a threshold violated last Friday and immediately rejected by the profit-taking.
Tezos (XTZ) and Cosmos (ATOM), on a weekly basis, are the only two positive signs in the top 30. Today, however, Cosmos loses more than 5% on a daily basis, while Tezos is the only positive in the top 20 along with Leo (LEO) who tries to hover above parity, 0.3% on a daily basis. Leo is in a decidedly bearish trend, slipping below 87 cents.
In general, this weakness weighs on the market cap that falls to 185 billion dollars, the lowest level in the last 5 months that has not been recorded since last May, It is a very delicate situation.
Despite the great difficulties at a general level, Bitcoin recovers dominance and returns above 67%. This is the best confirmation that it is the altcoins and the rest of the sector that feel uncomfortable with the falls of these hours. The dominance of Ethereum collapses to 7.7% and that of Ripple sinks to 4.5%, the lowest levels of the last two months.
The volumes have risen with trades above 20% which confirm the tension of these hours.
Price Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin breaks again the bullish trendline that supports the trend from the lows of a year ago of December 15th, 2018. Unlike the break that occurred at the end of November and recovered in the following days, at the moment prices are staying below the upward trendline in the $6,900 area, a step away from the end-November lows in the $6,600 area.
For Bitcoin, it is important not to further extend the falls of recent hours, with volumes that have risen but see sales prevail. It is necessary to stop this movement and not go below 6,900 dollars to avoid suffering a further bearish attack.
Price Ethereum (ETH)
For Ethereum, the delicate situation of the past few days now sees prices fall again, going to review the levels of March, 9 months ago. A step backwards that for ETH only highlights the difficulty that has been going on since the end of June and that finds no cue and no indication of a bullish turn.
The downward trend continues. It will be necessary not to extend the losses below $125, the relative lows of the beginning of March 2019.
