Investing.com - Bitcoin recovered from its lowest level since June, while Ethereum rose above the $300 mark once again on Friday.
“The crypto market appears to be in its final stretch of its bearish state,” Chris Yoo, a portfolio manager at Black Square Capital, said in an email. “This correction is not unexpected due to the over-valued nature of many blockchain projects and regulatory uncertainty.”
Bitcoin was up 2.8% to $6,497.7 at 1:10AM ET (05:10 GMT) on the Bitifinex exchange.
Ethereum traded 5.8% higher to $302.1on the Bitifinex exchange.
Ripple jumped 6.8% to $0.30225 in the last 24 hours on the Poloniex exchange, while Litecoin gained 3.4% to $56.879.
Ethereum began its recovery on Thursday after the network’s cofounder Vitalik Buterin gave an update on the so-called Casper protocol upgrade, which is supposed to solve scaling issues.In a 75-post long self-proclaimed “tweet storm” on Wednesday, Buterin promised that the upgrade, meant to speed up transaction speed, was nearing.
Ethereum’s transaction speed tends to run between three to seven transactions per second, still a far cry from the thousands per second that credit card companies can process.
Meanwhile, Arthur Hayes, CEO of cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX, said nervous venture capitals might soon begin moving out of their ICO tokens and ether holdings, and predicted that the Ethereum prices might dip below $100 this year.
While most analysts believe the cryptocurrency industry’s movement this week were due to concerns that ICO investors are cashing out to cover expenses amid concerns that cryptocurrency bear market would drag on, senior market analyst at eToro Mati Greenspan said this assessment misses the mark, and argued that the strengthening U.S. dollar has been impacting crypto prices.
“As the United States moves to tighten its economy and avoid strong inflation, they’re taking action that is strengthening the Dollar. Because the US Dollar is the global reserve currency, many smaller economies rely heavily on a stable exchange rate with the greenback,” Greenspan wrote. “So too, as the Dollar is being seen as a stable store of value at the moment, there really isn’t much incentive for people to store their money in digital assets.”