Bitcoin Price Climbs Above $18,000 Again in end-of-year Sprint

The past few days were not overly kind to the Bitcoin price. Although no major corrections have occurred, the Bitcoin price has been remarkably flat for quite some time now. That has all come to change over the past 24 hours, as the BTC price suddenly started moving up again. Thanks to solid gains, we are now looking at a value of just over $18,000. Maintaining this momentum may not be possible for more than a few hours, though.

Bitcoin price is Finally Moving Again

On paper, it was only a matter of time until we saw some more Bitcoin price movement. While the year 2017 has been permabullish for most of the time, things suddenly came to an uncomfortable standstill a week and a half ago. We have seen very little price momentum ever since, although solidly maintaining a value of nearly $15,500 is pretty impressive, to say the very least. Then again, it was only to be expected that massive run would need some time to collect its momentum again.

Over the past 24 hours, we have seen the Bitcoin price rise from $16,314 all the way to $17,997. That is a more than remarkable gain, to say the very least. After all, after such an extended period of sideways trading, this price action is not exactly what most people expected. Plenty of traders and speculators have been waiting for a Bitcoin price increase, it will be interesting to see if this momentum can be maintained moving forward.

More specifically, it seems we may see a slight Bitcoin price retrace in the coming hours. These 8% gains should not be underestimated, as it goes to show there will be plenty of profit-taking in the very near future. Although a small dip will not necessarily mean all that much, there is no reason to think this Bitcoin price will remain even remotely stable at this price level. It is unfortunate we can’t have any real stability in the cryptocurrency market, but we’ll all have to endure it, for now.

With over $15.7bn in 24-hour trading volume, Bitcoin is shattering all previous records once again. It is uncanny how this volume seems to spike out of nowhere on a  regular basis, even though most other cryptocurrencies are struggling for any decent volume right now.  A trading volume of eight digits is almost the new normal as far as Bitcoin is concerned, which a welcome change of pace compared to earlier in 2017. The world’s leading cryptocurrency also surpassed the $300bn market cap again, which is good to see.

Unsurprisingly, Bitfinex is still the leading cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. Its lead over Bithumb is just $130m, though, which is next to nothing. Poloniex and Bittrex also contribute a lot of volume, although that is through their respective XRP/BTC trading markets. bitFlyer has slipped down all the way to the tenth position, which is mainly due to altcoin pairs and BTCC’s USD market showing some strong volume over the past 24 hours.

How all of this will play out for Bitcoin, remains to be seen. Plenty of people expect the Bitcoin price to hit $20,00 before the year is over, but that may not necessarily be feasible.There is still a  very long way to go before that price level can be reached, and there is no reason to get ahead of ourselves whatsoever. An interesting weekend lies ahead for all cryptocurrency traders, that much is rather evident.