The total cryptocurrency cap climbed past $770 billion today. This day last year, the total cryptocurrency market cap was below $20 billion, so these figures really demonstrate the cryptocurrency markets dramatic growth over the past few months.
Ripple's XRP continues to hit record highs so let’s check it out. It gained more than 40% over the past 24 hours and its market cap is moving closer to $150 billion. XRP reached a record high moving closer to $4. On Bithumb it surpassed $4.40 against the KRW with a volume of over $3 billion. BitOasis, a leading digital asset wallet and exchange in the Middle East and North Africa has announced they will integrate XRP soon.
Bitcoin gained more than 10% yesterday, but today it is a bit lower. We saw it climb past $15,500 yesterday and today we saw it slip under $15,000. Bitcoin has been struggling to regain strength since it hit a record high of around $20,000 on December 17th. We saw it move closer to $17,000 on December 27th before falling lower again, so when do you think it will be able to fully regain its strength and hit a record high? Bitcoin currently only dominates around 33% of the total cryptocurrency market.
Moving over to some other news. Merrill Lynch has banned clients from investing in the Silbert bitcoin fund. On December 8th, Merrill Lynch decided to stop its clients from buying shares of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC). This is the only regulated bitcoin investment vehicle in the US market operated by Grayscale Investments, a brokerage arm of Digital Currency Group. Merrill Lynch advisor also told the Wall Street Journal, that “I think it’s a very good idea. [The company] made an assessment that there’s too much risk.”[When you buy a currency, you buy that country [based on its underlying economy and monetary supply.] When you buy bitcoin, you just buy bitcoin.”
