The uneventful weekend focused on the hard fork that affected the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain but not the price.
Summary
Hard fork for Bitcoin Cash, but the price does not change
Yesterday, November 15th, 2020, the block 661,641 was reached a few minutes after 12:00 PM UTC, effectively creating the division between the two factions of Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN) 22.1.0, which will follow the longer chain, and Bitcoin ABC 0.22.4 producing yet another airdrop and starting to mine a new chain that will follow the rule of imposing a 8% deduction on mining profits.
It was a proposal launched in recent weeks, but not shared by the BCH community and developer Amaury Sechet that led to the separation of the groups.
The hard fork has not created any particular tensions in the price of BCH, the main protocol that will continue to be considered the continuation of the original project, oscillating within the side channel between 240 and 280 USD, already started in recent days.
Bitcoin dominates the market
After warming up its engines in October, in November Bitcoin keeps showing its muscles and ends the week with the third-best closing ever.
Earning a further 5% from last Monday’s prices, Bitcoin’s performance is the second-best among the top 20 capitalized.
Among the big names, only Litecoin (LTC) is doing better with a gain of more than 10% and prices that are back at $70, the highest in February. The interest for Litecoin also increases the volumes that rise to the highest levels since August, with trading volumes in countervalue in the last 72 hours behind only Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Today it is Waves that conquers the first step of the podium with an increase of over 17%, followed by ThorChain (RUNE) +16% and SushiSwap (SUSHI) that approaches 10% recovering over 110% from last Monday’s levels, trying to get out of the swamps that last week saw prices fall below $0.5.
Volumes and capitalization
The total trading volume has been trying to recover after falling to its lowest level since the beginning of the month. Yesterday, with less than $1 billion traded on major exchanges, Ethereum’s volumes recorded the least traded day since November 1st.
Total capitalization continues to rise above $465 billion, the highest level in the last 33 months. Bitcoin continues to maintain over 65% market share, with Ethereum falling back to just 11%, while Ripple (XRP) recovers a few decimal places trying to move away from last week’s low of 2.5%, the lowest level since December 2017.
The total amount of collateral locked in DeFi, which was at its highest ever level at one step from $14 billion over the weekend, fell by around $250 million.
The Uniswap DEX maintains its leadership despite a return below $3 billion in value locked by traders on the decentralized exchange. Followed by Maker and WBTC rising above $2.03 billion for the first time, supported by the new record of 124 thousand tokenized bitcoin on this protocol.
Bitcoin (BTC) Price
The week starts with the price close to last week’s highs, just one step away from $16,500. The approach has low volumes, an indication that it is more of a floating price due to lack of sales.
Under these conditions, it is necessary to break the recent highs as soon as possible to understand whether the breakout will attract new purchases to support climbing to around $17,000 USD, or the real purchases have ended and a retracement of prices is necessary to form a valid support from which to climb more vigorously.
From these levels, there is plenty of room for manoeuvre, up to 13,500 USD, without ruining what has been built so far.
Ethereum (ETH)
The attack of 480 USD on Friday failed, where sales again prevailed as at the beginning of September, although with less malice than at that time. The return to the 440 USD area increases the validity of this support already tested last weekend.
Now it becomes necessary to understand if the rebound of these hours that brought prices above 455 USD, will materialize over 475-480 USD in the coming days. If this were to happen, new annual records would be set by resuming the psychological area of $500.
On the contrary, the uptrend that characterized last week would have come to the first stop, recovering the ground lost to Bitcoin. In this case, it is important to monitor the strength of the short supports: the first at 420 USD, or 380 USD in the case of greater weakness.