Markets Weekly is a column analyzing price movements in the global digital currency markets, and the technology’s use case as an asset class. The price of bitcoin broke past $450 this week, as markets rallied in response to perceived progress surrounding the network’s block capacity dilemma. The price breakout, which took place as the digital currency surged more than 6% in the seven days through 12:00 UTC on 22nd April, ended the pattern of the last several weeks, when bitcoin fluctuated largely within a tight range.
"Traders have been watching the psychological price barrier of $450 for a long time," Joe Lee, founder of bitcoin derivatives trading platform Magnr, told CoinDesk.
He added: "Now that was broken earlier in the week by every major exchange, eyes are on the bullish trend continuing with $480 and $500 as target prices for the three-to-six month timeframe." Volume still modest
Interestingly enough, bitcoin’s sharp rise took place amid more modest weekly trading volumes.
Market participants traded 12.96m BTC during the seven days through 7:12 EST on 22nd April, according to Bitcoinity data. As in recent weeks, OKCoin and Huobi were responsible for 49.46% and 44.6% of these transactions, respectively.
By comparison, the ether markets experienced far less volatility, ending the week close to where it started.
The token on the Ethereum blockchain network experienced 24-hour trading volume of $13.6m at roughly 12:00 UTC on 15th April, which dipped slightly to $13.4m by approximately 12:00 UTC on 22nd April.
These figures fell far short of this digital currency’s transaction activity over the last month, as 24-hour trading volume reached $22m on 24 March and $15m on 1st April. SegWit boosts outlook The week’s most notable development was the release of the code for Segregated Witness ( SegWit ), an upgrade to the bitcoin protocol that will allow blocks in […]
