The week begins in the sign of altcoin. First and foremost, it’s the prices of Ethereum and Ripple, which achieve a double-digit increase in just a few hours.
The movement started during the weekend and saw the euphoria of the rise that had exalted Bitcoin last week, moving to the altcoins.
Ethereum and Ripple prices drag down the altcoins
Ethereum in the last few hours is back above $600, a level not recorded since May 26, 2018. Ripple also returns to the levels of November 2018 and regains the 55 cents of dollars. These rises drag the entire altcoin sector.
It’s a moment of glory for the whole sector that returns above $550 billion of capitalization, the highest level since January 2018.
Unlike what was happening last week, this additional total market cap gain in the last 48 hours also benefits from the rise in altcoin capitalisation.
Taking Bitcoin’s capitalization down to $343 billion, altcoins alone capitalize over $207 billion, the highest level not seen since the end of May 2018.
The strong bullish movement of the last few hours has also gained ground for the dominance of Ethereum, which is now more than 12.2%, a market share that ETH has not recorded since the beginning of September.
Ripple, on the other hand, even returned over 4.5%, the highest level since December 2019.
Today, ETHs and XRPs are the best among the big ones, with Stellar (XLM) earning as much as ETH +12%, but Ripple has earned 20% over the last 24 hours. XRP doubles its share from last Monday’s levels.
Generally speaking, only Horizen (ZEN) is better, earning 44% on a daily basis, an ecosystem of an alternative blockchain that scales down the sidechain protocol making it decentralized and customizable.
The euphoria of altcoin does not infect DeFi
This movement with a strong strengthening of Ethereum, the most used token as collateral in DeFi, does not show a particular recovery by DeFi with the TVL that remains over 14 billion but without any particular upturn.
This is due to the situation of Uniswap which sees users continue to demobilise ETH’s collateral positions. The number of ETHs in the various protocols is falling, below 7 million, the lowest level since early September.
The number of bitcoins blocked in the Defi sector remains stable, at just over 170,000.
Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin surpasses the weekend staying close to the record levels of the last 3 years, recorded at the end between Friday and Saturday, with the price of Bitcoin that for the first time since December 2017 has reached 18,950 dollars. For Bitcoin it is the highest level since mid December 2017.
It is a trend at the moment supported more by the technical aspect than by the volumes: in fact, during the weekend the exchanges have decreased and they remained above 3 billion dollars, but below the record set last week at 6.5 billion for one of the days with the most exchanges of the year,
It’s a delicate week for BTC, which will have to find confirmation of the $17,500, a real level of support in the medium term.
Ethereum (ETH)
The strong bullish movement makes Ethereum gain about 30% from Friday’s levels. It is an impulsive movement that makes the quotations fly to the highest levels of the last two years, abandoned at the end of May 2018.
ETH remains healthy despite the period of uncertainty that lasted throughout October. November is proving to be a month to be redeemed with this strong jump upwards.
The continuation of the week is now important for Ethereum. In contrast to BTC, ETH has created a more solid structure and this is confirmed by the trend of these hours that see Ethereum leap above $600 for the first time since May 2018.