Bitcoin and Ether Market Update: December 5, 2019

Total crypto market cap lost $3.9 billion of its value since the morning of Monday, December 2 and now stands at $197.5 billion. Top ten coins are all in green for the last 24 hours with Binance Coin (BNB) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) being the best performers with 3.1 and 2.7 percent of increase respectively. At the time of writing bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $7,334 on the Bitstamp daily chart, while ether (ETH) stands at $146 and Ripple’s XRP moved further down to $0.216.

BTC/USD

Bitcoin moved back into the downtrend channel around $7,220 during intraday trading on Sunday, December 1, but managed to recover later in the evening. It closed the first day of the new month and last of the week at $7,425 with a 6.3 percent of a price increase.

The BTC/USD pair opened the new seven-day period with a third consecutive red candle on the daily chart. The coin erased another 1.5 percent of its value and dropped to the $7,300 zone.

If we draw a Fibonacci grid taking as a starting point the last low we hit in December 2018 (which was $3,122) and follow-up the last bull run all the way up to $13,860 in June 2019 it is easy to see that we are currently situated around a critical support level. The 61.80% Fibonacci level at $7,224 will serve as a support for bulls and might trigger the next reversal in trend.

On Tuesday, December 3 the bears were rejected right there hitting the mentioned level perfectly without being able to break it. Bitcoin remained almost flat for the day even though it was trading in the wide range of $7,414 – $7,235.

The mid-week session on December 4 was extremely volatile. The most popular cryptocurrency was seen as low as $7,089 before peaking at $7,776. It closed with a red candle to $7,194.

The popular cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex will enable bitcoin transactions via the Lightning Network (LN) as announced on Tuesday, December 3. The news was confirmed by the company’s chief technology officer (CTO) Paolo Ardoino on Twitter as Bitfinex will become the first major trading platform to implement the so-called “second layer protocol” for Bitcoin payments.

The technology was built to support P2P micro-payments outside of the main blockchain network thus increasing its scalability.

ETH/USD

The Ethereum Project token ETH was trading in the $146-$152 zone on Sunday, December 1, but closed flat at $151. It was 7.2 percent up on a weekly basis.

The popular altcoin opened the Monday session with a drop to $147. Bulls were able to recover in the evening but still ended the day with a loss to $149.

On Tuesday, December 3, the ETH/USD pair dropped even lower and touched the $147 mark in its fourth straight losing session since it peaked at $160 of November 29.

The third day of the workweek found the whole cryptocurrency market trading in green. The “ether” was no exception and climbed up to $153 during intraday just to close with a loss to $142 later in the day when bears finally took over control.