A five-month high for Bitcoin overshadowed a fairly tepid day for altcoins today, and proved that when the price of BTC moves significantly, everything moves with it.
Wait. That's not right.
Bitcoin moved higher... the market moved lower. In fact, overall market cap was down slightly from Monday's highs, despite the inexorable advance of Bitcoin.
Correlation in the markets has been a major indicator that speculation drives cryptocurrencies, not actual value.
And we shouldn't make too much of a one-off like today.
But it is a little unusual to see BTC making a move upwards while almost everything else slides.
In fact BTC dominance is now at its highest level in three months, at 53.73%, while XRP's share of the market has dropped from a high of 11.44% to just 7.36% today... and ETH has dropped from a high of 12.06% to just 9.96%.
It's Bitcoin all the way, today. Is the 'actual value' of Bitcoin* beginning to diverge from the 'potential value' of almost all altcoins?
That would make for an interesting few weeks.
Happy Tuesday.
*I'm not getting into whether that's as a store of value or a mean of payment, oh hell no, argue amongst yourselves on that one!
Jon Rice Co-founder & Managing Editor
P.S. If you have comments on this letter, please feel free to send them along to me directly. My email address is editor@cryptobriefing.com
Bitcoin kicks butt, dominates XRP