Fred Schebesta, Co-founder of cryptocurrency broker HiveEx.com (and Finder.com) is currently in New York City speaking at Consensus – here are some comments from Fred:
"Winter is over. We've been closely watching the steady rise of cryptocurrency prices since December 2018 and bitcoin has finally cracked through the US$8,000 mark. It's the first time BTC has hit this level in nine months.
"This space isn't going anywhere. Confidence is slowly returning to the market and I think it will keep rising this year and hit US$8,548 by the end of 2019. But we need more real world adoption for cryptocurrency to be widely used."
2018 cryptocurrency statistics:
26% YoY ICO funding
From Jan 1 - December 31 2018 total market cap dropped 78.70%
24 hour trading volume fell 52.52%
The highest peak in 2018 was on January 8, when total market cap reached $833.44 billion.
The lowest point was on December 16, 2018, when market cap fell to $102.09 billion.
BTC began 2018 with a market share of 38.62% when there were 1,365 coins monitored by CoinMarketCap.
By the end of 2018, while there were 709 more cryptocurrencies monitored, bitcoin’s (BTC) market share reached 51.69% – an increase of 33.84%.
BTC price fell by 72.60% over 2018, from $13,657.23 at the start of the year to $3,742.70 – levels not seen since October 2017.
But despite the decline in BTC price, the number of coins traded jumped by 65.30%.
Based on 24-hour trading volume and the price per BTC, on January 1, 2018 there were 753,531 BTC bought compared to almost 1.25 million coins on December 31, 2018.
2019 to date (May 9):
Total market capitalisation increased by 50.54% since the start of 2019, from $125.71 billion on January 1, 2019, to $189.24 billion on May 9, 2019.
In the 24 hours of the first day of 2019, the cryptocurrency market reported $14.06 billion traded.
By May 9, 2019, 24-hour trading volume increased more than three-fold (227.95%) to $46.12 billion.
The past month has seen the highest activity of 24-hour trading volume ever recorded. On April 3, 2019, reported 24-hour trading volume hit over $88.40 billion
Bitcoin remained strong throughout the first part of 2019 to May 9, growing its market share by 9.58%.
On January 1, 2019, BTC recorded a 51.89% market dominance, and increased to 56.86% by May 9, 2019.
BTC’s market share is at the highest level since September 2018.
The price of bitcoin (BTC) has jumped by 58.70% this year, from $3,843.52 on January 1, 2019, to $6,099.75 on May 9, 2019.
It’s the first time BTC has broken through the $6,000 barrier since November 2018.
BTC 24-hour trading volume increased over three-fold (265.42%) this year, trading a total of $4.32 billion on January 1, 2019, compared to $15.80 billion on May 9, 2019.
Based on the above figures, there were almost 1.47 million more BTC traded in the 24 hours of May 9, 2019 (2.59 million), compared to January 1, 2019 (1.13 million).