In the past 2 days BTC price climbed 7% and ETH price went up 19%. This is substantial value increase ahead of the anticipated Constantinople hard fork.
While the end of 2018 saw an 80% price drop from the highest mark ($19,500) for Bitcoin, the performance of BTC is seen as being a good one by industry specialists. According to former BitGo executive, Jameson Lopp:
A couple things are clear: 2018 was the worst year for Bitcoin. Also, 2018 was the best year for Bitcoin. It just depends upon which metrics you’re focused.
Statistics show that Bitcoin nodes are now being used for economic purposes. There is also increased BTC academic interest that is showing a constant growth, together with venture capital investments quickly increasing. Lopp added:
Yes, Bitcoin fared poorly in terms of exchange rate in 2018. But by almost any other metric the system is improving and growing. Those of us who are dedicated to this system shall continue to BUIDL and add value; we have no control over the market but I expect that it will catch up to us sooner or later.
The Sustainability Of The Current Crypto Momentum
Large gains appeared for various assets like EOS, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash. Ethereum’s gain of 19% came in just 24 hours and it actually managed to go over XRP.
It is possible that Ethereum is going to keep increasing its price since the Constantinople hard fork will decrease potential circulation supply in the following months.
What is questionable though is whether or not this crypto assets recovery is going to lead to the official end of the current digital assets bear market.
On January 3 we saw the cryptocurrency market having a value of $90 billion, an amount that is lower than what we saw in November. An increase of close to 70% would be needed to get back to November 2018 levels.
The only situation in which we can say that the crypto bear market is over is that in which crypto assets reach the valuation of $300 billion or more.
