Bitcoin Price Charges Toward $10,000 as Bulls Regain Footing
The Bitcoin price charged back toward $10,000 on Monday as the bulls began to regain their footing following last week’s downturn.
Bitcoin Price Charges Toward $10,000 as Bulls Regain Footing
Bitcoin began the week on a high note, climbing nine percent to approximately $9,800 on cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.
This bullish pivot reversed some of the damage from last week’s correction, which saw the Bitcoin price sink as low as $8,342 on March 9 after peaking at $11,700 just four days prior.
Bitcoin now has a $166.8 billion market cap, which translates into a 42.1 percent share of total cryptocurrency market cap.
At present, Bitcoin’s trading volume very well distributed, with no single trading pair accounting for more than 10 percent of the coin’s global volume.
Notably, a slight spread has opened up between Bitcoin’s USD and KRW pairs, as BTC/USD is trading consistently at $9,800 across Bitfinex, GDAX, and Bitstamp, while South Korea-based Upbit and Bithumb each price it above an equivalent value of $10,140. While not exactly a return of the “kimchi premium,” this indicates that demand among Korean investors remains strong despite the introduction of regulatory measures meant to cool off the markets.
Bitcoin Recovers from Mt. Gox Panic
Last week’s Bitcoin price dive correlated with a “perfect storm” of bearish factors.
As CCN.com reported, US regulators took several shots at initial coin offerings (ICOs). The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) warned cryptocurrency exchanges that it is “unlawful” for them to list ICO tokens the SEC deems to be securities. Meanwhile, a newly-released Treasury Department letter suggested that ICO operators may have to comply with bank-grade reporting requirements and anti-money laundering regulations. Though targeted specifically at ICOs, these developments injected a bearish sentiment into the wider cryptocurrency markets.
Moreover, news broke that the Mt. Gox trustee had liquidated more than $400 million worth of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash on cryptocurrency exchanges over the previous several months. While it is debatable to what extent this sale had a meaningful effect on the Bitcoin price during the recent market correction, the fact that the trustee continues to hold nearly $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency — and has demonstrated a willingness to sell on exchanges, rather than through the over-the-counter (OTC) services typically exercised by large-scale buyers and sellers — further worsened the mood among investors.
However, it appears that traders oversold these developments, as the Bitcoin price has once again proved buoyant in the face of adversity.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
