Saturday, Oct. 19 — crypto markets are seeing a slight recovery after another downward movement as Bitcoin (BTC) is back to trading above $8,000.
Market visualization. Source: Coin360
18 million BTC mined, BTC blockchain hits 600,000 blocks
After trading below $8,000 threshold for most of the day, Bitcoin has seen a sharp recovery to climb above the mark at publishing time. The biggest cryptocurrency is trading at $8,041, up 1.2% over the past 24 hours, according to Coin360. However, Bitcoin is still in red over the past week as its price is down 3.4% over the past seven days. Bitcoin’s market dominance stands at 66.2% at press time.
On Oct. 18, the total number of mined bitcoins crossed 18 million, leaving 3 million to mine in total, as tweeted by founder of crypto investment firm Morgan Creek Digital Assets, Anthony Pompliano. Following the new milestone, Bitcoin now has 85.7% of total coins mined, while the number of Bitcoin left to mine until the next halving now amounts to 373,888, according to BitcoinBlockHalf.com.
Bitcoin’s blockchain has also seen another important milestone today as the number of blocks passed 600,000, Bitcoin Core developer Pieter Wuille tweeted on Oct. 19.
Earlier today, gold bug Peter Schiff posted another bearish tweet, claiming that Bitcoin chart “looks horrible” and forecasting that the biggest cryptocurrency may soon not only drop to as low as $6,000, but also may collapse to below $2,000.
Bitcoin 24-hour price chart. Source: Coin360
Ether (ETH), the second cryptocurrency by market cap, is up nearly 1% over the day. At the time of writing, the top altcoin is trading at $174, down more than 5% over the past seven days.
Ether seven-day price chart. Source: Coin360
XRP, the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is up 1.3% to trade at $0.294. The altcoin is seeing significant growth over the past week, up nearly 8% over a seven-day period.
Yesterday, XRP’s developer Ripple announced that it sold $66.24 million worth of XRP in Q3 2019, which is down almost 74% compared to the record sale worth $251.51 million in Q2 2019.
XRP seven-day price chart. Source: Coin360
Winners and losers
At press time, only three coins among the top 20 cryptos by market cap are seeing red, while privacy-focused coin Monero (XMR) is seeing the biggest loss of 5.6%.
On the other hand, Tron (TRON) is seeing the biggest gains in the top 20 list over the past 24 hours, up 4.6%.