Weekend retreat: Bitcoin and altcoins fall over the weekend

Bitcoin’s price fell more than 5% to $3,520 over the weekend, and is now approaching an important long-term support of about $3,500.

The bulk of the Sunday sell-off occurred over one hour, as you can see below. Trading volumes remained quite high throughout the session, with roughly $5 billion worth of BTC trading hands on virtual currency exchanges.

As a reminder, last month, Bitcoin bottomed near $3,100 before rebounding more than 30%.

Bitcoin reversal

Even with the recent decline, Bitcoin’s share of the overall cryptocurrency market is basically the same at just above 50%. That’s because altcoins and tokens registered bigger losses, with Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and EOS each falling considerably more than 5%. Of the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap, IOTA and NEO were the worst performers.

Alternative cryptocurrencies tend to gravitate around Bitcoin, especially during bearish trends. Justified or not, Bitcoin continues to be a major influence on how other assets perform.

Trading across all virtual assets has remained elevated over the last 24 hours, with total volumes exceeding $15 billion. Cryptocurrencies have seen a substantial rise in circulation over the past three months as sleeping accounts have become active once again.

Despite that, in less than one month, the current bear market will officially become the longest in cryptocurrency’s short history, as reported by Coin Rivet. As of today, the bear market has stretched on for 395 days. The previous longest on record was seen back in 2014-15, when the bear trend lasted for about 420 days.

As mentioned last week, 2019 could be a year of accumulation for Bitcoin, as long-term holders and institutional investors look to capitalise on low prices. The current hesitation by buyers reflects uncertainty about whether the market has reached a definitive bottom.

Market plunges

As mentioned, the cryptocurrency market lost $5 billion worth of value in 55 minutes on Sunday. At the time of writing, the total cryptocurrency market cap is worth close to $115 billion.

The entire stack of cryptocurrencies appears to be on dangerous footing, and despite miraculous growth recorded by various altcoins in recent weeks, one gets the feeling that a return to a market valuation of $100 billion is literally just around the corner.

Some of the weekend’s biggest losers include EOS, which sunk about 7% from the daily high of $2.50 down to $2.30. Technical analysis shows EOS was on shaky round, and its losses on Sunday were twice that of Bitcoin.

Another cryptocurrency that fell greatly was IOTA. From its daily high of $0.325, IOTA fell over 7.5% down to $0.300. That wipes out most of IOTA’s gains from the previous week and returns the DAG-based cryptocurrency to the $0.30 range – one it has been in and out of since December of last year.

Finally, after falling out of the top 10 biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap, NEO recorded over 75% growth leading into January 2019 – more than Ethereum or Ripple managed during the same time period, for instance. However, NEO saw a reduction of 10% as the coin price fell from $8.35 down to $7.50. NEO trade volumes rose 49% over the weekend, as the selling pressure took traders by surprise and caused prices to plunge.

Hopefully, we’ll see some recovery during the week.

Good trades!