Crypto Today: Bitcoin rebounds, Ripple rises to yet another record high
- Ripple inches closer to $2 mark.
- Bitcoin recovers to $15K.
- Total market cap surpasses $600 billion.
Following a two-day long slide, the BTC/USD staged a modest recovery on Friday and rose to a fresh daily high at $15,300 before going into a consolidation phase in the second half of the day. According to the latest available data on coinmarketcap.com, the pair is trading at $14,843.00, up 3.77% on the day.
Despite the corrective slide witnessed in the past couple of weeks following the record-setting rally to the critical $20K mark earlier this month, the price of Bitcoin in USD terms rose nearly %15000 in 2017. On January 1, 2017, the BTC/USD pair was trading at $992.
Earlier today, news of Pavel Lerner's, an executive at the Exmo Bitcoin, an exchange based in Ukraine, kidnapping in Kiev created concerns over possible disruptions to the exchange's operations. However, Exmo spokesman Anatoliy Larin eased investors' worries as she explained to the BBC: "We are doing everything possible to speed up the search for Pavel Lerner. Despite the situation, the exchange is working as usual. We also want to stress that nature of Pavel's job at Exmo doesn't assume access either to storages or any personal data of users. All users' funds are absolutely safe."
Meanwhile, Ripple, the best performing cryptocurrency of the week, preserved its bullish momentum and advanced to a new all-time high at $1.90 on Friday. In addition to expectations of Ripple being used more broadly following some Japanese credit carp companies' plans to use the currency in their services, Ripple's fast transaction times and cheap processing fees draw investors' attention.
As we approach the end of the year, the market action suggests that more investors are looking to get their hands on cryptocurrencies. The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies in the last 24 hours rose more than $60 billion to surpass $600 billion. Bitcoin remains as the biggest currency with a market domination of 42% on Friday. Ripple's impressive rally lifted its market cap above $70 billion, which puts it in the third spot behind Ethereum ($73 billion market cap).