Slight Retreat, But Legacy Bitcoin Holds Above $4,000
A slight retreat in the legacy bitcoin (BTC) market happened on Tuesday. Single-coin prices had risen as high as $4,400 on some exchanges in the last 24-hours, but at mid-day today, they were down to the $4,130 level.
Still, it’s been a remarkable few days for BTC, as it hit all-time highs amid predictions that peaks are in the near future. The Block Tribune Volatility Index, which measures pricing swings in legacy bitcoin, sat at BTVI 71.1, indicating extremely above-average volatility in the last 24 hours.
Other cryptocurrencies also followed the leader, with most down on the day Bitcoin Cash (BCC) was incrementally down to the $296 level, basically the same as Monday. Ethereum’s ether was also slumping, hitting the $289 mark after a few good weeks.
Ripple’s XRP had a nearly five percent bite taken out in the last 24, now sitting at $0.861878. Similarly, Litecoin has withered to the $43 level. Dash was up to the $199.99 mark at mid-day, while Monero squeezed out a tiny bump in price to just over $48.
As the bitcoin wars cool – Segregated Witness is now locked-in with the legacy bitcoin miners and awaits its final updates by all – the main question is, how far is up for the original cryptocurrency and its market partners?
Predictions on all sorts of outlandish valuations for bitcoin have been floated by some pretty smart people, and deep-pocketed investors (well, some of them) have shown no qualms about diving into the market in a deep-pocketed way. With the stock market booming as well, there seems to be a wealth effect going on with the capital markets. Whether that means further joy or ends in tears is a matter for the financial Gods to sort in the coming months.
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TODAY’S 24-HOUR BITCOIN STATISTICS
Bitcoin market highlights for the 24 hours ending August 15, 2017 at 3:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time
The highest price seen was $4,469.99 on the Kraken exchange at 12:18 am today. Kraken saw $56,949,200 of bitcoin change hands.
The lowest price seen was $3,785.32 on Poloniex’s exchange at 10:42 am today. Poloniex’s 24 hour volume was $77,828,200.
The average price on the surveyed exchanges, as weighed by volume, was $4,189.50.
Volatility was unusually high, with the BlockTribune Volatility Index coming in at 71.1. A higher number indicates greater price volatility with 50 describing an average day.
These statistics were consolidated from 9 different exchanges. It includes only USD/BTC trades and only on those exchanges that had at least 1% of the total volume of USD/BTC trades during the measurement period.
