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The volatility in the cryptocurrency market has always been talked about. This week’s significant price action proved it once again. Several days ago, the price plunged to its lowest levels since May 2019, and just in the last 24 hours – a missile launch, a skyrocket, there are no more words: Bitcoin’s price surged by more than 40%.
Until a week ago, the Bitcoin market appeared boring, with only a few moves in either direction, as the cryptocurrency spent almost a month trading around the $8,000 level. Earlier this week, Bitcoin’s price plunged from $8,300 to $7,300, where it found support and had been trading for several days.
And Then: The Largest Daily Percentage Increase Since 2011
However, that was not the only move that Bitcoin had in store. Yesterday, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap experienced a significant price increase, gaining $1,000 in one hourly candle. The surge continued, and Bitcoin reached a monthly high of $10,350 on Bitstamp, while on other exchanges such as BitMEX, the price of the cryptocurrency reached almost $10,600.
This is roughly a 42% increase from the bottom. WOW! Even Satoshi himself can’t remember such a green day in Bitcoin’s history, as the last time such impressive gains were seen was in 2011. As of writing these lines, the price has corrected a bit to $9,600.
Chinese Spirits
As expected, the crypto community has been quite vocal about the recent price surge and the possible reasons for it. While most of those reasons seem a bit far-fetched, one word repeats itself – China.
The country’s president announced just yesterday that “the country should be adopting more blockchain, as it’s the way forward for technology innovations and industrial revolutions.”
Moreover, Bakkt’s trading volume has continued to improve, recording another all-time high after 1,131 Bitcoin contracts were traded in a single day, almost double the ATH from a few days ago of 640 contracts.
Altcoins Follow Closely But Decline Against Bitcoin
As the following image from Coin360 makes clear, the crypto markets are green overall. However, one notices that the green of Bitcoin is a lot darker than that of the altcoins.
As always, when Bitcoin makes a sudden move, altcoins follow in the same direction dollar-wise but lose value against Bitcoin. Indeed, the prices of most major altcoins declined 10-20% against Bitcoin today.
The USD price of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Ethereum, rose over 16%. EOS rose over 20%, and Litecoin rose over 19%. However, all saw double-digit losses against Bitcoin. Hence, Bitcoin’s dominance rate rose to 68.5% following its meteoric gains.