A couple of years ago, Bitcoin craze was at its peak. Everybody went absolutely mental when it came to cryptocurrencies and the price of the most popular virtual currency soared to about 20,000$.
Today, though, all of that craziness has subsided. However, does this meant that the market has completely collapsed?
Or are there perhaps still some interesting moves that can be made out there?
It’s certainly a very interesting topic to discuss, so let’s take a peek at the current status of the world of virtual coins and the exchanges offering them. You might be very surprised after you read this.
Bitcoin reigns supreme
While you may not be hearing about Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies a lot these days, they are still very much alive and kicking.
True, the prices may not necessarily be the same as during the time of the Bitcoin craze, but the market has stabilized and now functions pretty much as any other financial market.
As a matter of fact, the cryptocurrency market is predicted to grow quite substantially over the period of next five years, with some estimates predicting the compound annual growth rate to be above 10%!
Therefore, long-term investments in cryptocurrencies may actually be quite a prudent move.
As for the market cap, Bitcoin is still at the very top, with its market cap hovering around 130 billion dollars right now. That’s right – BILLION.
And while the price of a single coin is at the moment this article is being written at around 7000$, there was a surge in value earlier this year that saw the price reach about 13,000$.
So, Bitcoin is very much active, and now could even be a good time to buy bitcoins online, given that it has lost almost half of its value since June.
Still, about a year ago the price was around 3,500$. Therefore, we cannot say that the market is stagnating, and Bitcoin certainly does offer plenty of opportunities for profit to all traders out there.
Plenty of other interesting stuff
But what about the other coins? Well, Ethereum has the second-largest market cap (close to 16 billion) and Ripple is third (9.5 billion).
In total, there are 11 different cryptocurrencies whose market cap exceeds the $1 billion thresholds, which should really disperse all doubts about the overall health of the market.
Names like Stellar, EOS and Litecoin are all above that limit, and even Cardano and Tron, ranked 12th and 13th respectively, are not that far.
All of them can be traded with brokers such as IQ Option or with cryptocurrency exchanges we will mention very soon.
It is interesting to take a look at how the price of Ethereum and Ripple has been behaving over the last 15 months or so.
After reaching the low of about 85$, Ethereum was rising constantly to reach 310$ in late June of 2019. After that, it has been dropping, and today the Ethereum price is about 145$ a piece.
In that sense, it mimics Bitcoin’s behaviour, although the extremes are far smaller. On the other hand, Ripple has been remarkably consistent over the last year, although it too was somewhat affected by the summer spike.
Overall, however, both of these coins seem like pretty solid investments, especially Ethereum given that its price is currently on the decline a bit.
Cryptocurrency exchanges
If you want to join in on the action, you will have to go to a cryptocurrency exchange (or a broker). For all you beginners out there, you don’t have to worry – everything can be done online and there is certainly plenty of choices.
However, not all exchanges/brokers are the same, which means you should inform yourself thoroughly before you commit and open an account with one of them.
Check out the financial requirements (fees are particularly important), the offer of cryptocurrency pairs they have, the simplicity of their interface and all that stuff which can affect your trading experience.
Some of the best (well, the largest) cryptocurrency exchanges and brokers out there are the likes of the aforementioned IQ Option, then Kraken, Coinbase, Changelly, Binance etc. Each of them has millions of visits every day and turns over tens of millions (some even hundreds of millions!) of dollars every single day.
That metric alone can tell you how healthy the cryptocurrency market is at the moment.
A word of advice, though: some exchanges may provide you with a wallet, while others don’t have those options, which is certainly something to consider when making your choice.
Learn everything about the best cryptocurrency exchanges and only then make your move.
A few final words
In conclusion and according to all available data, the cryptocurrency market is doing just fine, regardless of the fact that it’s getting less time in the media since the Bitcoin craze ended.
Quite literally, hundreds of millions of dollars exchange hands every single day, so you can be sure that the trading is not slowing down.
If you take a look at the charts you will see that there was a significant spike last summer and that the prices have been going down since then, which means that now could be a great time for buying.
Bitcoin is still at the very top of the industry, but there are plenty of other viable investment targets to choose from, most notable of which are Ethereum and Ripple.
These two (the latter in particular) have been fairly consistent in the last year or so, which makes them very attractive long-term investment. Bitcoin, on the other hand, fluctuates a lot in value.
Because of that, just the top three coins alone provide ample opportunities for a variety of trading philosophies.
Considering the fact that most projections say the market will only expand with a steady growth rate in the next five years or so, you are just in time to get in on the action if you’ve been thinking about joining the fray.
To answer the question from the title: yes, cryptocurrencies are still very much a viable investment target and not considering them would be quite an oversight.