Bitcoin smashes through $6,700 as Ripple leads breakout

Mike Novogratz, a former trader at Goldman Sachs and founder of Galaxy Digital Capital Management, says the bottom is in for the bitcoin price.

The markets appears to be reacting accordingly, with bitcoin above $6,700, XRP continuing to rocket higher and now with other alts joining in the price appreciation fun.

As we noticed earlier this week, Ripple has been leading the way. This is unusual for recent times, where bitcoin has been the main magnet for buyers. Ripple has fallen 89% from its all-time high at $3.32.

There are some stupendous gains being recorded out there (see table below). Aurora is nearly 55% higher at 0.031, XRP 42%, according to coinmarketcap 31 crypto assets are 10% or higher. Bitcoin has risen around 6% in the past 12 hours on rising trading volumes. Resistance at $6,550 was taken out in an instance. Total market cap has risen some $20 billion since the beginning of the week, to $219 billion.

And this has all come on the back of the hacking of the Zaif exchange in Japan, which the market has shrugged off – that’s an indication of real buying strength coming back into the market.

Novogratz says the bottom is $6,000 and today’s action seems to be expansive proof  he may be right.

Novogratz, speaking at a Yahoo Finance conference, and reported on Reuters, said: “Bitcoin has held $6,000. Yes, it is off its highs, but it has established itself as a store of value.” He said “seller fatigue” had finally set in.

Wall of money heading in to buy bitcoin, crypto

He thinks a wall of money is headed straight for crypto as FOMO – fear of missing out –starts to infect the banks. “I think institutions are moving towards investing. It’s shocking how much has happened.”

But don’t take Mike’s word for it – take a look at the bitcoin volume: $6.7 billion over the past 24 hours.

As you can glean from the chart below, bitcoin has not just smashed through all near-term resistance , it is now also trading well above the 200-day moving (blue line) average on strong volumes. This is looking like the real thing as opposed to another dead cat bounce.

Let’s see what the weekend brings, but if you have been dollar cost-averaging by drip-feeding into the market, it may be time to increase that monthly amount. (Smartphone users – rotate device to landscape to see full chart and table below)

BTC jumped 6% in 12 hours and is now trading sharply higher at $6,720, comfortably above the 200-day moving average

We have heard rumours at Coinintelnews from the City of London that there are likely to be some notable movements by banks and fintech companies in the crypto space.

Weiss Ratings thinks that at these prices a clutch of top alts are a “steal”. Indeed, Weiss has been tweeting incessantly about the wonders of XRP when others all around were laughing.

Looks like they are having the last laugh today:

If you believe #crypto market will return to its former glory, the benchmark for a 10X gain, is a 90% retracement. As of today, here are a few of top-25 coins that are at or above a 90% pullback: #IOTA = 90%#NEO = 91%#XRP = 93%#ADA = 96%
These are absolute steals right now!

— Weiss Ratings (@WeissRatings) September 17, 2018

The fact that the bounce is happening now is all the more significant given news of the apparent delay in the process for approving, or not, the Van Eck Solid X physical bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF). There was also some blood-curdling headlines about an old denial service bug in the bitcoin code that could have crashed a chunk of the network but has now been fixed.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has received 1,400 submissions from the industry and members of the public regarding the Van Eck ETF proposal.

SEC to flex muscles

In other matters, the SEC’s co-director of enforcement Stephanie Avakian said it will be stepping up enforcement action in the ICO arena. The transcript of the speech is available on the SEC website.

“First, we have tried to be thoughtful about how to handle ICO registration cases that do not involve fraud. We want to recognize legitimate efforts to use new methods to raise capital, but we also want to make sure investors receive the information, and protection, they are entitled to under our laws.

“Second, we are also looking beyond the issuers of ICOs. Very recently, the Commission announced a settled order against two individuals who ran a self-described “ICO Superstore” that operated as an unregistered broker-dealer and participated in unregistered offerings.”

That sounds a lot like the SEC will be taking more vigorous action in crypto and that’s a good thing for investors in the US.

There are 31 crypto assets in the top 100 by market cap that had risen by 10% or more over 24 hours, as at 09:21 (UTC+1), Friday 21 September*

*Data source: coinmarketcap.com

Jennifer Collins

Jennifer has been writing about crypto since 2016 when she first got interested as a student at Queen Mary University in London. You can email me here: jennifercollins@coinintelnews.com