Bitcoin (BTC) Ended June as Top Performing Cryptocurrency
Usually, BTC prices are not volatile enough and altcoins easily take the lead in short-term gains - but this time, BTC was ahead of the pack.
Bitcoin (BTC) outperformed all digital assets in June, in a month of dramatic volatility. Instead of an altcoin season, June saw a dramatic rally in prices, also containing a record for 2019 at nearly $13,800. BTC also logged lows around $7,500 at the beginning of the month, before a dramatic surge in the last 10 days lifted BTC to new valuations.
All in all, BTC managed to add $2,500 net to its price after all the fluctuations, and for now supported the still weak altcoin rally. BTC’s valuation dominated 64.2% of the entire market. In June, BTC also marked absolute record volumes above $45 billion’s equivalent in 24 hours, an unprecedented level of activity that has outpaced the December 2017 rally.
Traditionally, a BTC June rally translated into price strength until at least August. But this time, the rally was quite different. For one, the markets are savvier, and some rallies only end as a short-term bounce. Bearish attitudes were renewed asBTC wiped out thousandsof dollars within a day. Expectations are for BTC to slide down to the $9,000 range again.
There are expectations that the June rally was merely a fluke or a concerted manipulation.
Last weekend, BTC remained volatile, as selling pressures prevented the price from persevering above $12,000. On Monday, as of 8:00 UTC, BTC sank below the $11,000 mark, trading at $10,979.80, down around 7.5% in the past 24 hours.
The selling pressures increased the prevalence of Tether (USDT) trading from around 58% of all volumes to as high as 64%. The USDT supply has also been growing, to above 3.6 billion coins as newly minted assets were issued. In June alone, the supply of USDT increased by 500 million coins net, and the active turnover of the stablecoin added unprecedented liquidity to the markets.
The other factors boosting BTC in June were the announcement of Facebook’s coin, Libra, coming up in 2020. The US Securities and Exchange Commission also showed some encouragement for discussions surrounding a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). July arrives with expectations of the upcoming test trading of the Bakkt BTC futures.