For the first time in several months, altcoins have outperformed Bitcoin in price appreciation.
Although Bitcoin prices registered 2.5% growth for the week, altcoin prices generally registered 3-4x higher. A price analysis of the top 5 altcoins by market cap follows.
ETH/USD
Ethereum has been struggling over the past two months, slipping more than 40% since July 8.
The steady collapse in price (from $340.23 to $180.21) has defied expectations, as it frequently breached key price support levels. However, the price has recently stabilized and may even be headed for a substantial price gain.
Ethereum’s recent price gains may reflect positive news about development advances. With Ethereum 2.0 soon to be released, Prysmatic Labs has provided release dates for their sharding client Prysm.
Prysm is expected to help Ethereum process transactions faster, thus relieving network congestion and allowing for greater scalability.
At press time, ETH is selling at $181.08
XRP/USD
Although Ripple’s price was somewhat bullish early yesterday, the coin’s price dropped mid-day. (from $0.2590 to $0.2493). Since then it has rebounded substantially, as it currently sits at $0.2645.
Moreover, Ripple has remained above a critical price support level ($0.24508) for nearly a week. There is some expectation that it will break out of its 20-day exponential moving average.
Jed McCaleb, founder of Ripple, has been aggressively selling his XRP for the past year.
Consequently, critics have accused Ripple of suppressing its price growth although the community’s reaction overall has been mixed.
At press time, Ripple is currently selling at $0.2696.
BCH/USD
Bitcoin Cash continues to retain a fairly steady price, staying within the $300-$350 price range since mid-July.
If the price breaks out above $360, analysts believe it could be headed for $515.
Bitcoin Cash recently began experiencing network congestion from an unexpected surge in traffic. This event brought to light the fact that Bitcoin mining pools are apparently capping block sizes at 2MB.
Ironically, BCH was solely created to improve scalability via 32MB blocks. The higher block size was “a way to scale the protocol “on-chain” without any additional add-ons like Lightning Network or SegWit.”
It’s uncertain to what extent this his having on the current price trend.
At press time, BCH is selling at $302.94
LTC/USD
Litecoin continues to experience downward price pressures. Since mid-June, the price has slid from $145 to $67.
The price has yet to move past its 20-day exponential moving average, reflecting a bearish attitude by traders toward the coin.
Nonetheless, some analysts believe “Litecoin’s prices could be heading for a positive breakout in the long term.”
This is in part due to Litecoin prices reflecting a Falling Wedge pattern, which suggests that the price might experience up to a 19% rise soon.
In addition, Litecoin’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) reveals Litecoin to be flirting with oversold territory. As RSI climbs, the potential for price increases as well.
At press time, Litecoin is selling at $69.64.
USDT/USD
Tether being Tether, it remains roughly pegged to the US Dollar. Over the past 24 hrs, Tether has actually climbed to $1.01. It has also achieved a record market cap in the past day of $4.1 billion.
In recent news, Bitfinex shareholder named Zhao Dong stated that Tether Ltd. is planning to issue two new stablecoins, one pegged to the Chinese renminbi and another to commodities (possibly gold, crude oil, and rubber).
The Chinese renminbi-pegged stablecoin will be dubbed CNHT and its reserve held in a Belgian bank.
Tether expects it to be launched within the next few weeks, noting that it will not interfere with Chinese capital controls.
At press time, Tether is selling at $1.0017.