Bitcoin and ether prices both climbed during the first half of this year, as a number of factors – including rising adoption, yuan devaluation, the ‘Brexit’ and anticipation surrounding the halving of bitcoin’s mining reward – helped the two digital currencies rise in value.
These developments fueled macroeconomic uncertainty , which analysts have identified as providing tailwinds to bitcoin prices. Amid this backdrop, the sentiment of bitcoin traders was positive, according to market data including long-short ratios and other measures of confidence.
While bitcoin prices climbed roughly 56% from 1st January to 1st July, according to the CoinDesk USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI), this figure lagged behind the 63.8% increase enjoyed during the second half of 2015, and it fell far short of the 622.3% and 740.6% gains bitcoin experienced during the first and second halves of 2013, respectively.
The price fluctuations bitcoin enjoyed in the first six months of this year took place as market participants traded more than 450m BTC, according to Bitcoinity data gathered on 10th July. Chinese exchanges OKCoin and Huobi continued to dominate trading activity, as they accounted for more than 93% of all transactions.
Market sentiment was bullish during the period, as figures provided by full-service bitcoin trading platform Whaleclub show that 66% of positions were long.
Past that, confidence, meaning the percentage by which a particular day’s position sizes were larger than average, was 74% during the six-month time frame. Ether rising
Bitcoin was not the only digital currency that enjoyed notable gains.
Ether, the digital asset on the ethereum platform, surged from $0.92 on 1st January to $12.42 on 30th June, a gain of roughly 1,250%, Poloniex figures reveal.The digital currency, which has seen less adoption than bitcoin but seems to be quickly making progress, rose to an all-time high of $21.40 at 05:00 UTC on 17th […]
