The total crypto market cap gained $4.5 billion of value for the seven-day period and now stands at $176.5. The top ten currency showed mixed gains for the same time frame with EOS and ether (ETH) being the biggest gainers with 7.2 percent and 5.7 percent respectively and Cardano (ADA) losing 7.3 percent. At the time of writing bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $5,183 while ETH stands at $169 and XRP’s Ripple is at $0.334.
BTC/USD
After four consecutive days of gains, bitcoin closed the trading session on April 4 with a drop to $4,934. The most popular cryptocurrency broke above the $5,000 mark on the Bitfinex chart two days earlier but was not able to hold on to its positions.
CME Group, one of the two U.S.-regulated derivative platforms offering Bitcoin-backed futures contracts (the other being CBOE), saw record-breaking trading volume on April 4. According to a tweet, there were 22,500 BTC contracts on that day compared to 18,300 during the previous record set on February 19, 2019.
On April 5, bulls finally managed to form a green candle and moved up to $5,088 as a result of the three percent price increase.
On April 3, BTCManager reported about the Russian social media giant VKontakte’s plans to enter the crypto industry via the creation of a cryptocurrency for the company’s vPay service. Now, the “Russian Facebook” has launched a mining service called VK Coin, according to local media Tass. It is still unclear if the new coin is indeed blockchain-based, but users can transfer it to one another or buy more “hashing power.” The new service is available on the VK mobile apps for Android and iOS.
The weekend of April 6 to 7 started with a highly volatile session on Saturday. Commentators saw the BTC/USD pair trading in the $4,960 to $5,282 range before closing almost flat at $5,091. It moved even higher to $5,242 on April 7 and registered a stunning 27.5 percent of price increase for the seven-day period.
Bitcoin opened the new week by climbing to $5,314 on April 8 and stabilizing above the psychological level of $5,000. On April 9, the leading cryptocurrency made a slight correction to $5,213, losing 1.8 percent during the day.
One of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitfinex announced it would remove its $10,000 initial deposit requirement. The platform, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands, will be opening its services to retail investors as a response to the huge demand during the past six months.
At the same time, the biggest European digital asset exchange Bistamp received a virtual license from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYFDS) on April 9. The so-called BitLicense will allow the exchange to operate in the state of New York and offer cryptocurrency services to its clients including trading of bitcoin, ether, XRP, Litecoin (LTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH).
The total number of transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain surpassed 400,000,000 on April 9 as per blockchain.com data. The number represents the total number of registered transactions since BTC’s inception in 2009.
April 10 brought a new winning session to bulls as bitcoin once again moved to $5.308.
ETH/USD
Ethereum bulls successfully pushed the coin’s price above the 2019 high of $161.5 on April 2 and were already eying the $180 mark. It lost $2 of its value on April 4, however, and dropped to $158.5.
On April 5, the ETH/USD pair gained 5.6 percent in value and climbed up to $167. It was trading in the $174 to $161 range during the day session on April 6 only to remain flat for the day.
Buyers pushed price up by six percent to reach $177 on the last day of the week as it registered a staggering 27.5 percent value increase for the seven-day period.
April 8 found ether above the $180 mark. It closed at $181 after a strong session in which it gained almost three percent. On April 9, it made a slight correction to $176, which did not impact the current uptrend.
One of the most popular altcoins was trading in the $187 to $169 range on April 10 but did not experience any significant movements, remaining at $177.
XRP/USD
The Ripple company token XRP formed a second consecutive red candle on the Bitfinex daily chart on April 4 and closed at $0.333. The 2.6 percent correction brought the coin close to the $0.325 to $0.32 support zone.
The XRP/USD pair, however, showed some strength on April 5 and gained nine percent to peak at $0.383 and eventually close at $0.366.
Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and his wife made the largest cryptocurrency donation to a U.S.-based university on April 5. Larsen reportedly contributed $25 million worth of XRP to San Francisco State University’s (SFSU) College of Business. According to the press release, the funds will be used to support local and global fintech ecosystems.
International money transfers company, RationalFX has moved to use Ripple’s xCurrent product as of April 4. The London-based fintech startup has been in a partnership with the San Francisco firm since 2018 when they first started using the xVia product (used for money transfers to emerging markets) over the RippleNet, and have now decided to upgrade to a more complex solution.
The xCurrent allows institutions to “instantly settle cross-border payments with end-to-end tracking.”
The XRP/USD pair started the weekend of April 6 to 7 with a drop to $0.356 on Saturday, but still managed to hold above $0.355 and the Fibonacci 50 percent level reached on April 2.
On April 7, it made an almost identical move but in the opposite direction, climbing back to $0.367. XRP was approximately 15 percent up for the last seven days.
The work week started with a two percent drop to $0.361 on April 8, which was followed by another 2.5 percent correction on April 9, this time to $0.352.
On April 10, XRP closed at $0.353 with almost no change compared to the previous session, still close to the Fibonacci 50 percent level.
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