It is Friday 21 September, Heritage Weekend for us here in South Africa, and this is the Global Crypto weekly market roundup. First up, we have your Podcast version of the roundup, and below that, the script in text form. NOTE: At time of recording, XRP had overtaken ETH by total marketcap, but has since pulled back to below ETH by $1.2 billion.
Things have been very strange for crypto investors today, because for the first time in weeks, the market is green across the board. And properly green as well, not with 0.2% increases, but with 6% and above gains on almost all of the Top 30 altcoins.
Of course, Ripple has led this rally, up a total of 120% since this time last week, where it was 27 US Cents, and is now sitting at 58 US Cents at time of writing. While it’s always difficult to determine, this rally seems to have been off the back of two announcements made by the Ripple foundation earlier this week: with Ripple’s head of regulation relations in the Middle East, Sagar Sarbhai saying they expect Ripple’s cryptocurrency banking product, xRapid, will go into commercial application soon – and, perhaps more relevantly, big bank PNC announcing that they will be adopting Ripple’s blockchain product xCurrent for cross-border transactions.
These announcements seemed to turn investor sentiment, and the cryptoasset went into full-on pump mode. But at 120% gains already this week, I’d be careful of a pullback soon.
Meanwhile, the jump in Ripple’s price, coupled with Ether’s recent selloff, saw Ripple become the second largest cryptoasset by market cap today. Only moments ago, Ripple surpassed Ether, and with a marketcap of $25 billion, it is now almost a full $2 billion ahead of Ether, and only a tiny $90 billion behind big boy Bitcoin 😉. But to think… people were talking about the flippening only a year ago. Well, the flippening happened alright. But it was marketcap position number two that got flipped! Sorry Ether.
The overall cryptoasset market capitalization is now sitting at $225 billion, up 13% from last week’s $198 billion!
Bitcoin dominance meanwhile is down 4.7%, from 56.3% a week ago to 51.8% – with Ripple jumping from 5.49% marketshare to 10.4% – meanwhile, Ether surprisingly has only lost 0.2% in marketshare, now equal with Ripple at that 10.4% mark.
The second biggest gainers on the markets this week was a shared position between Stellar Lumens and Cardano, both up 30% in the past 7 days, with Cardano edging Stellar Lumens by 0.9% over the 7 day period.
Cardano’s token ADA is up from 6.6 US Cents 7 days ago to 8.9 US Cents today. Meanwhile, Stellar Lumens’ token, XLM is up from 19 US Cents to 26.8 US Cents at the time of writing.
Every single cryptoasset with a market cap over $1 billion is up more than 3% in the past 24 hours, and only 3 are up less than 4%, with Bitcoin only up 3.29% in the last 7 days, the slowest gainer of the cryptoassets above $1 billion marketcap. (Tether is technically in the red, but as a stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar, of course it doesn’t really count).
Only 3 digital assets out of the Top 100 are down this week, with WAVES down 1.5% on the 7 day period, but up 1.5% today. Bitcoin Diamond and LISK are both down 1.78%, and Dogecoin is the worst performer in the Top 100 down 7.88% in 7 days, but that’s because of its 58% run earlier this month.
On the 24 hour chart though, all of these above assets are in the green.
Bottomline… market confidence seems to have returned, and everyone is enjoying a bit of green across the board for the first time in what feels like an eternity. Whether the double bottom on the Bitcoin chart, coupled with Ripple’s institutional news and the Winklevoss’s stablecoin announcement have anything to do with it, we can never know for sure. But this surprising jump in the entire market is a fun sign to remember this asset class is far, far from dead.
And wrapping up… Global Crypto was in Joburg this week! I had a great time being interviewed on BBC News Africa about crypto adoption on the continent, and after that we were out in North Riding for a small meetup, which was a lot of fun, meeting investors and even the owner of one of the very first Bitcoin ATMs on the continent!
Our next big event is happening next week Wednesday at The Sett, in Umhlanga KZN, and if you enter the discount code sacrypto (one word) you can get 20% off your ticket! Just click on the link in the sidebar to book your space, which is limited!
It’s going to be cracker of an event, so don’t miss it!
That’s all I have for today! Keep your stoplosses tight in these times, and remember… take profits this time!
From me James and the Global Crypto team, ciao!
