While the crypto market maintained stability in the $135 billion to $137 billion range, TRON and NEO recorded seven and ten percent gains respectively as the two best performing major digital assets on the day.
Bitcoin has shown decent volume at around $5 billion throughout the past two weeks but has struggled to show signs of a major breakout above key resistance levels.
Is the Market Up For a Boring Year in 2019?
In the last several weeks, a few crypto assets in the likes of Ethereum (ETH) and TRON (TRX) have surged in value due to scheduled product launches.
Constantinople, a hard fork on the Ethereum blockchain network, is set to be executed between January 14 and 18. In anticipation of the hard fork, the Ethereum price has nearly doubled since mid-December of last year.
TRON has also demonstrated a solid increase in its price on the day following the introduction of the BitTorrent token, a native cryptocurrency of the widely utilized torrent protocol launched on top of the TRON blockchain network.
The official whitepaper of the BitTorrent Token read:
Optimizing the existing BitTorrent protocol is an obvious first step in the introduction of a cryptographic token but it barely scratches the surface of what is rapidly becoming possible.
Many analysts expect the crypto market to undergo another major correction prior to engaging in a several-month consolidation period and an accumulation phase.
Until then, the market is likely to remain stable in a low price range, unable to initiate large price movements.
Several cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and TRON could demonstrate upward price movements leading up to anticipated product launches and protocol updates but most crypto assets will likely show stability due to their low volume and the overall decline in trading activity in the market.
A cryptocurrency trader with an online alias “The Crypto Dog” said about the short-term price trend of Ethereum, the best performing major digital asset in the past month:
I am bear biased until I have a reason to be otherwise, but happy to be proven wrong.
Not Everyone Expects a Boring Year
In a blog post, Travis Scher, a vice president at Digital Currency Group, a major venture capital firm that has invested in some of the largest cryptocurrency businesses such as Coinbase, said that he expects 2018 to be volatile and full of surprises.
“This is the most consistent industry trend I’ve seen over the years. Blockchain is super sticky — once you’ve gone full-time crypto, every other sector seems boring. Like every other year in blockchain, 2019 will be volatile, entertaining, and full of surprises,” Scher said, emphasizing that both individuals and companies involved in the space are unwilling to exit the space and wait out the crypto winter.
The latter half of 2019 could certainly show a revitalized cryptocurrency exchange market, especially if crypto assets recover during the first two quarter. But, based on the short-term price trend of many cryptocurrencies since November, the probability of drastic trend reversal remains low.
Click here for a real-time TRON price chart.
Featured Image from Shutterstock. Charts from TradingView.
