Friday, May 26, 2017

Bitcoin Bubble │ Re-Emerging Asian Fever

Source: CryptoCompare BTC/USD Index
Continuing its stellar rise, and adding more than 30% to its value in just a week, on May 25 (Thu) one Bitcoin was worth USD 2,768.32, way over twice as much as one ounce of gold. After crashing more than USD 500 from its intraday highs in less then 9 hours (-18.6%), Bitcoin has bounced back USD 300 off its intraday lows extending gains into what is likely to be another frenetic Asian session. While there are numerous drivers of the recent action, 'scaling' and 'asian fever' are the greatest factors with Japanese and Korean premia exploding.


Bitcoin has risen 170% over the last three months to reach a capitalisation of USD 40 billion according to the CryptoCompare BTC/USD Index, Ethereum too has seen its market capitalisation jump 330% in the past three months to reach USD 20bn according to the CryptoCompare BTC/ETH Index. It is Japan, Korea and Asian interest that is causing the price to rise and dragging up Western prices on the back of regulatory moves as well as scaling. This is the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies:  

Source: CryptoCurrency Market Capitalizations

To date that has mostly meant Bitcoin, but over the last two months Bitcoin’s share of cryptocurrency capitalization has actually plummeted to less than 50%, thanks to the sharp rise of Ethereum and Ripple in particular: 

Source: CryptoCurrency Market Capitalizations

This news is the latest bit of good news for the Bitcoin: