Soon you will hear Bohemian Rhapsody on Radio 2. A great moment to look back on the highlights of cryptocurrency in 2019. How did bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, ripple and bitcoin cash perform in the past year?
Litecoin block halving lifted the market
Many people will have forgotten it in the meantime, but it was really litecoin who pulled the cart early in 2019. Especially February 8 was a beautiful day, the rate then jumped by more than 36 percent.
The increase was probably due to the enthusiasm surrounding the litecoin block halving in August 2019. During a block halving, the reward for miners will be halved. This reward is at the same time the inflow of new litecoin on the market.
Will the new supply halve and demand remain the same? Then the price rises. It may well be that investors have responded by purchasing litecoin.
On the graph below you can see that litecoin (purple) started to rise faster than bitcoin. The absolute summit of 2019 will be reached on 22 June. Litecoin was then worth 128 euros. An increase of 391 percent compared to the start of the year!
Bitcoin was carried by Libra and Bakkt
From February the bitcoin course also slowly started to steam. But at the beginning of April things went really fast. On April 2, the rate rose by almost 22 percent in an hour! And that made for a lot of happy faces in our office:
The course went to the moon, and that was explained by technical analysis. But not only that, the cryptonews also caused the movement to move up.
There were already rumors in March that Facebook wants to develop its own crypto coin. With the cryptocurrency libra, Facebook wants to give everyone on the internet the opportunity to manage their money themselves. Just like bitcoin, but managed by a company that knows everything about you.
The hype surrounding Bakkt’s bitcoin futures platform also caused excitement on the market. Through Bakkt it is possible to trade in bitcoin futures contracts. Unlike other parties, these contracts are covered by bitcoin instead of dollars. Bakkt would therefore have a direct influence on the bitcoin rate.
More and more news platforms were writing about bitcoin, for a moment it seemed like 2017 again. Even Donald Trump couldn’t resist letting his opinion shine through. He doesn’t like bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
Bakkt and Facebook drove the bitcoin rate to a high of 12,200 euros on 26 June. From then on the downward trend was set.
Bakkt’s disappointing start gave the bitcoin course a push down. Only 28 contracts were traded on the first day. The bitcoin rate fell by almost 16 percent in an hour.
Then it was time for joy again. The Chinese president said he likes blockhain. The enthusiasm was great, the Chinese government is not normally in favor of cryptocurrency. The rate flew up by 40 percent in one day!
Back to the technical analysis. If you are a loyal fan of our articles, the bitcoin price has been moving between two parallel trend lines for months. You call that a channel. Who knows that bitcoin can break out of this falling trend in 2020!
Altcoins drop out, bitcoin dominance increases
Bitcoin has gone its own way since the second half of this year. While bitcoin (yellow) still tries to maintain its value in the summer, crypto coins such as ether (red), bitcoin cash (green) and xrp (blue) fail.
Especially xrp cannot keep up with the cryptomarket. If you bought xrp in January 2019, you are now more than 48 percent in the red. With bitcoin cash (22.9 percent) and ether (2.8 percent) you are still in the plus.
According to analyst Jacob Canfield, xrp has still not found the bottom. He believes that xrp can even fall to ten cents. Only then does he purchase xrp.
But who knows, next year can just be a great year for ether. In 2020, Ethereum will be transferred to Ethereum 2.0, the new version of the network. Verifying transactions then becomes more energy efficient than bitcoin. Who knows, that attracts new interest, and that can be good for the ether course.
Bitcoin dominance continues to grow
The graph below shows the dominance of bitcoin in the entire market. In other words: what percentage of the cryptomarket consists of bitcoin? At the moment that is almost 70 percent. And that is unbelievable, especially when you consider that there are almost 5,000 cryptocurrencys.
The dominance indicates that bitcoin is generally better able to retain its value this year than other crypto coins on the market. But that does not mean that there are no coins that have performed better than bitcoin. For example, Chainlink (LINK) has increased in value by 533 percent this year!
Curious about the other toppers of 2019? We previously wrote about the best performing crypto coins of last year.
What do you expect from the coming year?
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