Ether and Bitcoin Cash Rise 3% as Market Adds $8 Billion, Can Momentum be Sustained?
Over the past 24 hours, the crypto market has added $8 billion to its valuation, as the price of Bitcoin Cash and Ether rose by more than 3 percent. Very Low VolumeThe bitcoin price came close to breaching the $6,400 level but failed to continue its corrective rally above the $6,400 region. As of July 15, the price of bitcoin remains at around $6,350, after demonstrating a daily gain of around 1.9 percent. Bitcoin Cash and ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain network, rose by 3.5 percent, supported by an increase in volume. 0x (ZRX) and Tezos (XTZ) recorded daily gains of 17 percent and 12 percent, becoming the best performers of July 15. The Relative Strength Index (RSI), momentum average convergence divergence (MACD), and moving averages show that bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market are expected to continue their upwards movement in the short-term. On major crypto exchanges, bitcoin saw several multi-million dollar buy orders, which ultimately pushed the price of bitcoin up from $6,200 to $6,390. A large buy order worth $1.06 million on Bitfinex played a key role in initiating a speedy recovery and corrective rally for bitcoin in the past 12 hours. But, the volume of the crypto market has been an issue for over a week, and it still remains as a major barrier that may prevent the crypto market from recovering to previous support levels like the $270 billion and $300 billion mark. This time last week, the volume of bitcoin was around $5 billion while the volume of the entire crypto market exceeded $15 billion. As of July 15, the daily trading volume of bitcoin remains at $3.2 billion, and the market has been struggling to process $10 billion in trades in a 24-hour span. Various technical indicators could continue to demonstrate strong buy signals and signify a positive short-term trend, but if the volume of the market fails to hold up, it will be difficult for major digital assets to sustain momentum. Hence, despite the solid 3.5 percent increase in value of ether and Bitcoin Cash, and the relatively strong performance of bitcoin, Ripple, and EOS, a downtrend is more likely in the upcoming days than a corrective rally to the $6,500 region for bitcoin and $270 billion for the crypto market. Investors have to observe the volume of the market as the highly volatile nature of the crypto market could lead to drastic changes in the short-term in terms of momentum and volume. A large spike in volume on exchanges like Bitfinex or Coinbase could trigger the market to move by large margins in a bear cycle or a downtrend. Exciting DevelopmentsThis week, Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the world, announced the listing of five new digital assets, two of which are ICO tokens. Steve Cohen, a billionaire hedge fund investor, has entered the cryptocurrency sector, and all exchanges in the South Korean crypto market were approved by the Korea Blockchain Association. The next rally of the cryptocurrency sector, which still may be few months ahead, will reflect most of the positive developments in the crypto industry that have been made over the past three months. Featured image from Shutterstock