Over the last some hours, the cryptocurrency market has recorded a huge loss of USD18 billion, as major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, ETH, EOS, and BCC dropped by 4 to 13%.
While BTC ended the day with a 4% decline in its value, Ether, the native crypto of ETH, plummeted by 13% against the USD, becoming one of the worst performing major crypto alongside NEO.
Tokens recorded the steepest drop in their value on August 11, as most ETH based tokens such as Theta Token, Aion, Pundi X, Aelf, DigixDAO, WanChain, and Ve-Chain recorded a drop of around 14 to 18%.
Bitcoin Breaks 50 percente Dominance
For the first time in 2018, BTC, the most dominant crypto in the global market, has obtained 50% of the market share, securing its year-to-date (YTD) high on the dominance index.
The sudden increase in the dominance index of BTC which coincided with the spike in the volume of Tether have demonstrated that investors have become reluctant towards taking high risk and high return trades, mostly due to the lack of confidence in the short term trend of the market of crypto.
Over the past few weeks, tokens have lost over 50% of their value against BTC, which has also fallen by more than 20% since late July. For instance, EOS, dubbed the “ETH Killer,” has dropped 50% of its market valuation in the past 30 days, due to the instability and volatility in the market.
In recent months, the volume of Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocureency market have substantially decreased. In late July, when Bitcoin initiated a promising run to the higher end of USD8,000, its volume neared the USD6 billion mark.
As of August 11, the volume of Bitcoin remains below USD4.4 billion while the volume of Tether by USTD, a stablecoin whose value is hedged to that of the USD, has increased to USD2.8 billion, more than USD1.2 billion higher than the volume of ETH.
Since July, traders have discovered that the price trend of small cap tokens generally follow the price trend of XRP and EOS. In the past 24 hours, Ripple and EOS have dropped 11% of their value against the USD.
Where Does the Market go Next?
Due to the overly strong downtrend of major crypto currency, in order for the crypto market to engage in a large mid term bull run, the market would need to bottom out at a lower price range.
Yesterday, on August 10, CCN reported that analysts see Bitcoin testing a major support level at around USD5,800.
“If the price movement of Bitcoin in the short term plays out the same way as February, April, and May, Bitcoin will likely fall below USD6,000 in the upcoming days, possibly bottoming out at USD5,700 to USD5,800, as several analysts suggested,” CCN reported.
However, failing to secure strong momentum in the higher region of USD5,000 could lead Bitcoin testing USD5,500, which may lead to a further drop for the cryptocurrency market.