Commodity News

Bitcoin prices ended the first quarter of 2020 down by 10%, having seen early yearly gains swallowed up by Coronavirus market panic. On the day, Bitcoin is trading 6% higher compared to 24 hours previously, with a single Bitcoin costing $6,648.21. The rest of the cryptocurrency market is also seeing green and total market capitalization is nearly back to the same levels as the start of the year, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com.

Having started the year trading at $7,200, it only took a few days for digital gold to start its march upwards passing $8,000 on January 7 and $9,000 on January 19. By February 12, the world’s largest cryptocurrency even broke the $10,000 resistance level, but its march was halted as the world got to grips with the reality of the Coronavirus. It was back trading at $9,000 on March 6. On March 9 it fell to $7,800 and crashed to $4,500 on March 13: the day that US President Donald Trump banned international flights between the US and European nations. Since then, Bitcoin has been trending upwards, albeit at a steady pace. It peaked at $6,800 towards the end of March, but the bulls couldn’t prevent a monthly loss of 25% and a quarterly loss of 11%.

While Bitcoin may have ended the quarter down 11%, it has fared better than most other equities markets. The Nikkei 225 was down 20%, the FTSE lost 14% and the S&P 500 saw its worst quarter since 1938 having shed 18% over the same period.

In the short term, Bitcoin is potentially painting a bullish flag pattern, which means that prices could break quickly up to $8,000. However, the long-term view is less optimistic with a potential bear flag on the weekly chart. Recent resistance at $6,500 levels has now flipped to support which could prove a springboard for BTC to make a move upwards. However, there is resistance overhead at $6,800 and the digital currency will need to overcome this level with a volume break for bulls to see a major move. Despite the gains over the past 36 hours, analysts are still pointing to the $5,000 level as a likely target: a target that will only be negated if Bitcoin can quickly rise above $7,500 and even $8,400 in the near term.

As of 15:15 GMT, Bitcoin is the second-best performing of the top 10 coins. Tezos has posted near 8% gains over the past 24 hours. However, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, Litecoin and Binance Coin have all added more than 4% to their respective prices.

Bitcoin (BTC) prices have risen 6.32% and the world’s largest cryptocurrency is now trading at $6,661.47. The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, often referred to as digital silver to Bitcoin’s digital gold, Ethereum (ETH) has added 4.41% to its price and is changing hands at $137.80. Ripple (XRP) has managed to add 1.96% to its price to trade at $0.176 while Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) now cost $226.87 and $169.57 having increased by 4.02% and 4.53% respectively.

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