Whatever happened to all the other cryptocurrencies?
In 2017, the year Bitcoin surged to $20,000, the number of different coins mushroomed into the thousands.
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Because Bitcoin is open-source, anyone can create their own cryptocurrency. In 2017, the year Bitcoin surged to $20,000, the number of different coins mushroomed into the thousands.
Investors sold Bitcoin to buy those so-called alternative cryptocurrencies, or “altcoins,” for the latter surged much more. The value of all available bitcoins as a percentage of the wider cryptocurrency market fell to as low as 33 per cent.
When prices fell in 2018, however, investors sold altcoins to buy back into Bitcoin.
Now, Bitcoin’s market share in the wider cryptocurrency market is right back at the foot of 2017’s record-breaking surge to $20,000, accounting for more than 70 per cent.
Does that mean investors will start selling Bitcoin to buy altcoins again?
Maybe. But know the age-old investment adage that past performance is no guarantee of the future. Cantering Clark, a hedge fund manager, says Bitcoin needs to cross $20,000 for the altcoin season to truly come again.
At $10,347 (C$13,635) as of noon Sunday, Eastern Time, Bitcoin is still far from that price level. It may yet fall further, technical analysis suggests. The world’s first cryptocurrency is up 7 per cent for the week, but trading volumes are low.
News: mystery Bitcoin holder with $1 billion emerges
More than 94,000 bitcoins, worth over $1 billion, have been moved to an unknown wallet. Bitcoin transactions are public, but the identities of owners are strings of random characters. This transaction could be associated with Bakkt, a firm operated by the owner of the New York Stock Exchange that just started helping people store Bitcoin.
China is going big and bold with its so-called cryptocurrency, intended as its own alternative to Facebook’s Libra coin. A state-owned media organization takes out an ad in the United Kingdom’s Telegraph newspaper.
Apple appears to be on the same page, with a top executive’s saying cryptically: “We’re watching cryptocurrency … We think it has interesting long-term potential.”
The United States’ VanEck and SolidX, proponents of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), a sort of mainstream financial instrument, are now offering their product to institutional investors, non-publicly, a move that somewhat bypasses regulators.
The self-described Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright, the Australian ordered to hand over half of his alleged cryptocurrency after losing a U.S. civil trial, is appealing. The case, related to former business dealings, does not cover Wright’s claim to have invented Bitcoin.