Hope you had a great weekend. For residents of Charlottesville Virginia the weekend was not so quiet.
Virginia is currently filled with hate. As usual, comments from the President were less than helpful. From his vacation Donald Trump blamed both sides of the conflict, which is usually a good stance for a politician. However, in this case, one of the sides is led by members of the KKK and promotes racist driven violence.
Stocks are doing great in Asia so far today. It seems that the drive towards safety that we've been tracking has been suspended for now. Perhaps Asian investors are comforted by the fact that Trump may now be distracted from his conflict with their close neighbour Kim Jong Un.
Today's Highlights
- Bitcoin passes $4000 a coin!!!
- Let's focus on that while the rest of the market figures things out
Please note: All data, figures & graphs are valid as of August 14th. All trading carries risk. Only risk capital you can afford to lose.
Market Overview
Everybody is buzzing about the new all time high in the price of bitcoin, which rose and so far managed to remain above $4,000 per coin on weekend trading.
One year ago today, one coin sold for $579 so in 365 day bitcoin has grown 606%, a virtual explosion as people begin to reshape the way we think of money.
The price has continued on it's exponential climb despite the naysayers and despite 3 seperate attempts to split the network. (BIP 148, Segwit2x, and BitCash)
Dominance
We're not yet at the place where we can say bitcoin is competing with the US Dollar, though the US dollar has been declining steadily since the beginning of the year, it is certainly competing directly with other virtual currencies.
The closest contender has been ethereum. Ether tokens have grown even faster than bitcoin and over the last year have seen a growth of 2,525%.
Ripple also had a go for a bit and even passed ethereum for a few days as number two.
Bitcash has certainly taken a stab at bitcoin but so far has not been able to come close to it's value.
For now, bitcoin is trading at an inverse correlation to other cryptocurrencies. Meaning, that bitcoin's rise has been partially feeding off of declines from other cryptos and not just bitcash either.
The value of the entire cryptocurrency market has risen by $4.2 Billion over the weekend (Friday to Sunday) reaching a new all time high of $137 Billion.
In that same time frame, bitcoin's market cap has risen $11 Billion by itself.
Competition with Fiat
Though we're not on the level of competing with the dollar or the euro, or even the yen just yet, bitcoin certainly has been competing with some Fiat currencies.
The main one we can start tracking is the Venezuelan Bolivar. As we know, the current dictator Nicolas Maduro has imposed harsh sanctions on his own people which include restrictions from trading in anything except the VEF, which of course includes BTC. But that of course only encourages the people to use it more.
As the price of the Bolivar drops the Venezuelan volumes of bitcoin rise. At the moment, one Ƀ is worth 40,400 Bs. Two years ago, it was worth just 1,500 Bs.
Of course, the perception of how people view money is greatly corrolated with the way they view government since until now, the government has always been the ones in charge of the money.
Weak leadership has a way of influencing markets. It's become clear in Venezuala and other places recently. We hope for a more smooth transition in other parts of the world.
eToro, Senior Market Analyst
Disclosure: This content is for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or an investment recommendation. Past performance is not an indication of future results. All trading carries risk. Only risk capital you're prepared to lose.