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After flirting with $5000 mark for the past three days, Bitcoin has finally surpassed the psychological level to register an all-time high of $5381. As a result, almost all altcoins have dropped in value and are currently at their minimum levels – except Litecoin – which is up 10% in the past 24 hours.
The staggering 10% growth in the past 24 hours has placed Bitcoin at a market cap of $88 billion – increasing its dominance in the crypto market to 54%. At the time of writing, the combined value of all cryptocurrencies stands at $162.7 billion.
Bitcoin has put China’s ICO and cryptocurrency ban behind, which was the reason why Bitcoin price dipped after reaching $5000 last time.
This price surge can be attributed to three major factors: increase in demand from institutional investors, the rapid growth rate of the South Korean and Japanese Bitcoin markets, and the upcoming SegWit2x hard fork in November.
Mike Novogratz recently revealed that several large institutional investors have been preparing to engage in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets. He stated that retailers who accept Bitcoin as payment are on the rise.
Furthermore, leading Bitcoin markets – Japan and South Korea – now control over 65% of the global Bitcoin exchange market share. These markets are seeing an increase in demand from local traders and investors.
It is likely that this is not where the rally will end. According to CoinIRA CEO Trevor Gerszt, favorable regulatory environments like the U.S. and Japan will enable the bitcoin price to continue to rise over the long-term.
Interestingly trivia: There was a sell wall of 370 Bitcoins at $5000 on GDAX, which was destroyed without any hiccups.
Top Stories from the Crypto World
1. F2Pool does not signal NYA anymore
F2Pool, one of the largest mining pools with 10.4% hashrate, may have put the nail in the coffin for SegWit2x hard fork. It doesn’t support the 2MB fork, and the pool has also stated it hasn’t been running the BTC1 code.
In a nutshell, SegWit2x’s original plan was to kill off Bitcoin by making sure all hashpower was being removed so that no new blocks would be produced and people would be forced to switch to their altcoin.
Let’s not forget that miner’s mine for profit. They have huge bills to pay and mining an altcoin with less than half the value of Bitcoin will bankrupt them quickly. So it is not really a surprise to see that miners are starting to defect.
Bitfinex shows that the market values B2X at only 20% of BTC. Clearly, there is lack of community support for B2X. It remains to be seen how the hard fork will play out in November.
2. Blockchain.info releases full Bitcoin Cash support
Blockchain Labs has released support for Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and credited users with equivalent balances.
Starting today, those with BTC in Blockchain wallets August 1 are able to access an identical amount of BCH to trade or store.
3. Jamie Dimon says he’s done talking about Bitcoin
JPMorgan CEO, Jamie Dimon, has said he won’t be commenting on bitcoin anymore as the company says it is “open-minded” about cryptocurrency.
Last month, Dimon was partly responsible for Bitcoin price decline after calling Bitcoin a ‘fraud’. Now it appears as if he has lost faith in his own judgment. After Jamie’s comments, JPMorgan was one of the first companies to buy Bitcoins at a discounted price.
He said, “I wouldn’t put this high on the category of important things in the world. But I’m not going to talk about bitcoin anymore.“