Crypto Markets Trading Sideways With Slight Losses, April Gold Closes Slightly Down
Thursday, Feb. 14 — most major cryptocurrencies are trading sideways, with a few experiencing minor losses. The markets are seeing mixed signals as of press time, according to data from Coin360.
Market visualization from Coin360
The leading digital currency Bitcoin (BTC) is slightly down 0.19 percent on the day, trading at around $3,620 at press time. Over the past week, BTC has gained 6.38 percent, while its monthly losses were over 2 percent.
Bitcoin 7-da7 price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
Ethereum (ETH) — which regained its position as the second largest coin by market capitalization on Feb. 11 — is down by 0.31 percent during the past 24 hours, and is trading at around $121.75 at press time. Ethereum’s market capitalization is currently around $12.7 billion, nearly $200 million ahead of Ripple’s (XRP).
Ethereum 7-day price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
Ripple is up over the last 24 hours by 0.07 percent and is trading at $0.303 at press time. The altcoin’s weekly chart is showing its price increasing by 3.83 percent. After dipping to its weekly low of $0.291 on Feb. 8, XRP has seen moderate gain in price.
Ripple 7-day price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
Yesterday, Ripple, the firm behind XRP, introduced a major network upgrade of its XRP Ledger version 1.2.0, which now reportedly includes a number of network amendments, including MultisignReserve Amendment, fixTakerDryOfferRemoval and fix1578.
NEM is the major gainer over the day, having increased by 4 percent and trading around $0.042 at press time. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is down by 0.25 percent over the last 24 hours and is currently trading at $122.25.
Total market capitalization of all 2,072 coins on CoinMarketCap’s list is around $120 billion at press time, dipping as low as $119.8 during the day. The daily trading volume of all cryptocurrencies is around $19.6 billion.
Total market capitalization monthly chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
In commodities markets, gold futures ended lower as concerns about United States–China trade negotiations continued. April gold lost less than 0.1 percent to close at $1,313.90, which is down 0.4 percent on the week.
Earlier today United States banking giant JPMorgan Chase (JPM) announced it is launching its own cryptocurrency dubbed “JPM Coin” geared to increase settlement efficiency, initially within three of the company’s operations. JPM Coin will initially focus on international settlements by major corporations, helping speed up transactions that currently take a day or longer using extant options such as SWIFT.
As Cointelegraph reported earlier today, Barry Silbert, CEO and founder of Digital Currency Group and Grayscale Investments, said that the majority of digital tokens will not have value in the long run. In a purported phone interview with CNBC, Silbert said “I’m not a believer in the vast majority of digital tokens and I believe most will go to zero. Almost every [initial coin offering] ICO was just an attempt to raise money but there was no use for the underlying token."