By
Steve Muchoki
April 23rd, 2024
Crypto markets post a good recovery, headed by altcoins, as the overall market valuations move above $365 billion.
The positive momentum is back in the crypto markets as the market valuations have now hit a new five-week high on the charts. The crypto market valuations which were seen just below the $350 billion for over a week have crossed this sentimental barrier and is now trading at $365 billion valuations.
Although Bitcoin is showing a nominal movement of below 1.5% it is the other altcoins like Ethereum, Ripple and Bitcoin Cash which have proved to be the market mover. According to the data by CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin is trading at $8342 levels while Ethereum has registered an 8% surge and trading at $575. In the last 24-hours, Ripple has recovered by 20% and is currently trading at $0.84 whereas Bitcoin Cash has posted over 10% gains and is currently trading just short of $1000, at $981.
In the past seven days, although Bitcoin has been relatively stable, the price of the altcoins has moved forward consistently. Also, it was for the first time in April that the trading volumes have crossed $20 billion.
Bitcoin Cash Gains Ahead of the Hard Fork
The first Bitcoin derivative – Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has today posted a solid recovery of over 10% climbing close to the $1000 mark in the anticipation of the hard fork likely to take place next month. With today’s rise, Bitcoin Cash has shown a 60% recovery from is low of $603 on April 6, earlier this month.
Sebastião Coelho, CMO of Flashmoni, a blockchain company creating financial solutions for the unbanked and underbanked, said that one of the biggest challenges that cryptocurrencies are facing for their rising adoption is the scalability issue. Coelho said: “Before we see mass adoption of cryptocurrencies, we need to see a significant reduction in the time it takes to process transactions.”
Bitcoin Cash was created in August 2017 as a result of the hard fork in the Bitcoin blockchain network. Bitcoin Cash offers larger block size of 8MB against the 1MB block size in the Bitcoin network. The upcoming hard fork that is scheduled for May 15 is expected to have a block size of 32MB while expanding its capacity for processing more number of Bitcoin transactions.
Additionally, the network update is expected to bring several operations codes says James Song, founder and CEO of blockchain startup ExsulCoin. He further added: “This means simplified smart contracts will be possible on the bitcoin cash blockchain. This particular bit of news is what is driving market excitement around bitcoin cash.”
Morgan Stanley Analysts Say Miner Losing Money with Bitcoin Below $8600
Although Bitcoin has gained more than 25% since the beginning of April, a new report by Morgan Stanley analysts shows that it fails to recover above $8600 it will turn out to be unprofitable for the miners to continue with the mining activities.
A report by equity analyst Charlie Chan and his team notes: “We estimate the break-even point for big mining pools should be US$8,600, even if we assume a very low electricity cost (US$0.03 kW/h). Therefore, we think the Bitcoin mining hardware demand and price will decline further and affect TSMC’s wafer demand.”
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TMSC) has lowered its 2018 revenue guidance to 10% growth instead of the 10-15% as projected earlier as a result of the growing uncertainty in the cryptocurrency mining demand.