Markets Weekly is a weekly column analyzing price movements in the global digital currency markets, and the technology’s use case as an asset class. Bitcoin prices traded largely between $410 and $420 during the week between 11th March and 18th March, as 30m BTC was traded on exchanges globally. The digital currency’s price movements were largely subdued, starting the week out at $416.24 on 11th March at 12:00 UTC before surpassing the $420 level at 09:10 UTC. For the remainder of the week through 12:00 UTC on 18th March, the digital currency remained range-bound between $410 and $420.
Since then, bitcoin’s price has weakened, falling at around 14:00 UTC to a press time low of $403.63 at 19:45 UTC, a decline of $11.43 over the course of the day’s trading.
However, the modest price movements may have been overshadowed by the sudden attention given to ether, the token that powers the Ethereum blockchain.
Ether, which has been generating significant visibility as a digital asset, experienced sharp fluctuations during the week. The development is notable as ether serves as a way to run applications on the Ethereum blockchain and is not positioning itself as a store of value.
Ethereum released Homestead , the first production version of its software, on 14th March. Because of Ethereum’s success in drawing attention, some members of the digital currency trading community believe that ether is starting to serve as an attractive hedge for the uncertainty surrounding bitcoin.
The bitcoin community is currently grappling with uncertainty caused by perceived issues about the size of its processing capacity , with some arguing the protocol needs to be upgraded to accommodate more users and others proposing top-level networks that would build on its stability.
Amid this situation, Ethereum is "emerging as a strong hedge against bitcoin," digital currency expert Joseph Lee told CoinDesk. […]
