Bitcoin Circles $10,400 as Altcoins Rally, XRP Posts 10% Gains

Sunday, Aug. 18 — Crypto markets are seeing a strong surge of green, with altcoins posting the strongest gains and Bitcoin (BTC) circling the $10,400 mark.

Market visualization. Source: Coin360

After yesterday’s correction, BTC is today up nearly 2%, bringing it to $10,393 by press time. 

While still roughly $1,000 short of its price point at the start of its 7-day chart,  (Aug. 11), today’s recovery has kept the top coin comfortably above the $10,000 psychological price point. During a brief downturn mid-week on Aug. 15, Bitcoin had dropped as low as $9,700. On the week, Bitcoin remains 9% in the red.

Bitcoin 7-day price chart. Source: Coin360

Top altcoin Ether (ETH) has posted a strong gain of over 7% and is trading around $197 by press time. Having dropped below the $200 mark on Aug. 14, Ether’s fresh gains are now edging it back above this threshold. Losses on the week remain at a stark 7.86%.

Ether 7-day price chart. Source: Coin360

XRP is seeing an even more bullish 10% gain on the day, and is posting a milder 5% loss on its seven-day chart.

Among the remaining top ten coins several alts are seeing solid upward momentum: Litecoin (LTC) is up 6.5% on the day, EOS (EOS) is up 6% and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is up 5.7%. 

Widening out to the top twenty, alts are performing strongly across the board. Cardano (ADA), Unus Sed Leo (LEO) and Tron (TRX) are all up between 7-9% over the past 24 hours. 

Chainlink (LINK) is seeing a close to 7% gain on the day, with Stellar (XLM) up close to 5.6%. 

Dash (DASH), Tezos (XTZ), NEO (NEO) and IOTA (MIOTA) are all posting gains of 3.5-5%. 

Total market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies is at $267,390,988,350 at press time, according to Coin360 data.

In alt development news, the team at NEO revealed they were considering integrating Celer Network’s (CELR) layer-two scaling protocol to improve scalability. If finalized, the prospective integration would see the NEO blockchain benefit from Celer’s solution for faster off-chain transactions for payments as well as generalized off-chain smart contracts. 

As the alts spearhead today’s market recovery, the community continues to scrutinize the flows of ill-gotten proceeds from the $2.9 billion crypto investment heist PlusToken. As reported, over $240 million in proceeds were reportedly moved yesterday through four Bitcoin-denominated transactions.

In traditional markets, analysts are anticipating the opening remarks from United States Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium this coming Thursday. 

Market researcher James Bianco told CNBC today, Aug. 18, that after last week’s turbulence — which saw the 10-year Treasury yield dropping below the 2-year rate for the first time since 2007 — robust action from the Fed would be needed to avoid further negative market trends:

“We could see another plunge in rates. We could see further movement down in yields and the yield curve and more volatility and problems in the markets. He [Powell] should move aggressively,”