By
Steve Muchoki
April 23rd, 2024
While crypto market continues its positive show with Bitcoin Cash as the show-stopper, analysts remain bullish on the future.
Crypto markets continue their positive momentum as the Bitcoin prices are now just short of $9,000 levels with the total cryptocurrency market cap approaching the $400 billion mark. Last week proved to be very good for crypto enthusiasts as the bulls were seen taking charge of the markets. The crypto surge added $80 billion to the overall market valuations as per the global charts on CoinMarketCap, and this price-rally has been majorly contributed by Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple besides other altcoins.
At the press time, Bitcoin is trading at $8,927.27 while the overall crypto market valuations are at $399 billion, according to the data on CoinMarketCap.
As the U.S tax deadline passed away last week, analysts believe that the Bitcoin price rally to the $20000 mark is just to kick-in. Fundstart analyst and Bitcoin proponent, Tom Lee said:
“We believe the ‘winter’ is ending for Bitcoin, as the crypto to fiat pressures from tax day subside, and as headline risks seem to be fading.”
Considering the CoinsharesCrypto ETF, which is a major indicator of BTC price movements, he stated:
“We believe large institutional investors globally use this ETF as a way to quickly gain exposure to Bitcoin. Hence when shares rise, big money is buying bitcoin.”
Bitcoin Cash is seen once again leading the pack today posting a nearly 20% gain while trading just short of $1400 levels. It looks like as the Bitcoin Cash hard fork is approaching closer, more and more traders are lining up to grab this Bitcoin derivative at the earliest. The new Bitcoin Cash hard fork, scheduled next month in May, is expected to bring new features to the network along with simplified smart contracts that is driving the craze further.
Moreover, there has been a renewed positive in the market towards Bitcoin as the SegWit usage continues to grow since the beginning of the year. As per the latest data, Segwit transactions now amount to 32% of the total transactions while occupying 27% of the total block space in the Bitcoin network. Most of the crypto exchanges and wallets have now adopted the change and the use of SegWit is currently giving a further push to the most awaited Lightning Network development.
Last month, Lightning Labs released the first Bitcoin mainnet-ready Lightning Network after reaching 1000 active nodes. The Lightning Network is basically a second layer protocol developed atop the Bitcoin’s blockchain network, which takes transactions off the chain, thereby reducing congestion on the main network while expanding the blockchain’s operational abilities by manifold times. Later, it will add the record of all these transactions to the BTC’s blockchain network.
Former JPMorgan banker, Daniel Masters is quite bullish on the future of digital currencies saying that they are fuelling a financial revolution. Masters currently heads the digital investment bank Coinshares and is the chief investment officer at Global Advisors.
Masters remains optimistic about the crypto growth story and shares that the future looks to be promising with the crypto markets being much bigger than they are today.