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On Christmas day, Bitcoin price rebounded back to $14,000 and rallied up to $15,340 — gaining more than $1,500 in less than 24 hours. It is now safe to say the entire cryptocurrency market has recovered from the correction that happened on December 23, and Bitcoin has found a major support at $13,000 range.
Today, the cryptocurrency market cap surged from $488 billion to $582 billion, showing signs of recovery since Tuesday. OKEx, the Hong Kong branch of OKCoin, was one of the major exchanges to process Bitcoin trades, further solidifying itself as a leading cryptocurrency exchange.
Other Chinese Bitcoin exchanges like BTCC and Huobi have also moved their businesses to Hong Kong and are processing large volumes of trades. All these exchanges are only allowing BTC/USDT pair for trading. No fiat.
In South Korea and Japan, Bitcoin is still being traded with high premiums. On Bithumb, South Korea’s largest exchange, the Bitcoin price is being traded at a $3000 premium.
Altcoins, on the other hand, are looking to end the year on a high note. Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, Monero, and Zcash have recorded gains over the past 24 hours. Analysts are attributing the recovery of the cryptocurrency market to Christmas as the gathering of families, relatives, and friends has historically led to the surge in the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the market.
There is a good chance, throughout the holidays, the demand for Bitcoin will continue to skyrocket as new individual investors will be introduced to the cryptocurrency. It is possible that these new investors would look into cheaper alternatives with lower market caps coins, as they have the potential to provide higher returns, but with more risks.
Crypto trader Squeeze put it really well on his twitter:
“For new investors in crypto, think in market cap. Not price per coin. Market cap gives an estimate of the potential growth. Price per coin doesn’t mean anything as the supply for each altcoin differs. $0.1 per coin doesn’t mean it’s cheap. $100 per coin doesn’t mean it’s expensive.”
Top Stories from the Crypto World
1. EU not looking to regulate Bitcoin
Pierre Moscovici – European Union Commissioner for economic, financial affairs, taxation and customs, played down talk of supposed EU-wide bitcoin regulations and revealed the EU’s view of the cryptocurrency.
“At this stage, we do not consider Bitcoin as an alternative currency,” Moscovici said. “We see that there is quite a lot of speculation about that,” added the official, “Bitcoin is a really fascinating example of how human beings create value” while deeming it an irrational currency.
Moscovici went on to confirm that while the EU had studied bitcoin, the authority isn’t pressing ahead with any regulatory oversight into European bitcoin markets and exchanges. Not yet, anyway.
Why it matters: This probably is a good news for Bitcoin as of now. Even if EU goes about regulating the cryptocurrency, they’d end up regulating cryptocurrency exchanges — just like what China did. It is interesting to see, on one hand, we have countries like Japan and Singapore, supporting Bitcoin, and on the other, we have China and EU, that do not even consider it a legitimate currency.
2. Israel regulator threatens to ban Bitcoin firms from stock exchange
Israel Securities Authority (ISA) chairman Shmuel Hauser said he will bring to the authority’s board a regulatory proposal to enforce a sweeping ban on digital currency firms from trading on Israel’s only public exchange. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), incidentally, is under the ISA’s direct supervision.
Hauser said, “If we have a company that their main business is digital currencies, we would not allow it. If already listed, its trading will be suspended.”
Earlier this month, Hauser likened retail investors’ interest in bitcoin to the 19th-century gold rush. “Bitcoin looks like a bubble, smells like a bubble, behaves like a bubble and feels like a bubble…” Hauser said at the time.
3. Blockchain adoption could take 10 years, says Sberbank Chairman
Herman Gref, Sberbank’s chairman of the board, believes that the wider-scale implementation of blockchain in Russia could take as long as a decade. Gref was quoted as saying:
“If we talk about Russia, we have the largest number of implemented projects concerning blockchain. Although, they are all in the experimental mode. We are experimenting a lot. Maybe in 2018, we will be able to introduce some products on a large scale. The blockchain technology is one of our tricks. I estimate the implementation horizon of the technology in 8 [to] 10 years.”