In what is the latest sign of a depressed cryptocurrency market, some of the world’s largest and most widely traded assets are now priced below where they were 12 months ago.
At press time, bitcoin’s sell-off yesterday appears to have exposed the wider market to its worst losses since Oct. 11, a development that has caused the top 20 crypto assets by market capitalization to depreciate 3-10 percent and break down after a 12-day consolidation period.
With the move, dash (DASH), litecoin (LTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), ether (ETH) and neo (NEO) have effectively erased any gains earned in 2018, according to exchange and CoinMarketCap data.
Weekly chart
Of the assets listed above, DASH is trading at $154 – a $130 difference to last years levels of $284 last seen Oct. 30, 2017, while BCH is trading at $472 on Oct. 30 last year now standing at $419 – a $53 difference.
Ether (ETH) is also down on last year’s Oct. 30 levels of $305, currently changing hands at $197 – a $108 difference.
It’s also the same case for LTC and NEO down $6.66 and $12.55 respectively, which have both struggled to mount a reversal in the bearish trend that has been ongoing since bitcoin’s breakdown in early Jan.
Granted around this time last year price action spurred on by the ICO madness, sparked a massive bull-run that shot the price of bitcoin up to its all-time high of $20,000 in late Dec.
This had the dual effect of increasing the value of the entire alt-coin market as people poured into crypto increasing the total market capitalization to its peak of $817 billion on Jan. 8, 2018.
A turn for the worse?
Things have changed since bitcoin first fell below a key indicator back in March of this year, which signified greater bearish conditions had taken hold as investors sought to exit altogether.
The 200-Daily Moving Average (DMA) demonstrated a complete loss of bullish control the second time around when bitcoin attempted its move above $10,000 on March 12, 2018.
Bitcoin’s dominance rate has also steadily increased by 0.44 percent on the week, presenting a shift away from altcoins in lieu of the expected November run-up.
So it seems the bears have tightened their grip on the altcoin market possibly feeding into the new year instead of experiencing a bullish resurgence like some are expecting until they can once again break above their year-on-year targets.
Disclosure: The authors hold USDT at the time of writing.
Calendar image via Shutterstock; charts by Trading View