It has been a wild but mostly positive weekend of trade for the cryptocurrency market with gains being seen across the board. This increased the total value of the market to half a trillion U.S. dollars according to Coin Market Cap.
Here is what you missed:
The bitcoin (BTC) price rose as high as US$11,349 per token over the weekend before tumbling 9% lower back to US$10,326. It has since rebounded once again and sits at US$10,940, giving the world's largest cryptocurrency a market capitalisation of US$184.6 billion.
Despite a warning from its founder that cryptocurrencies could fall to zero, the Ethereum (ETH) price is up around 2.5% since the end of last week to US$950.02 per coin. This has left Ethereum with a market capitalisation of US$92.9 billion.
The Ripple (XRP) price has risen 2.5% over the weekend to US$1.15. At one stage Ripple had climbed as high as US$1.21 before the popular altcoin gave back these gains. This gives XRP a market capitalisation of US$44.9 billion. Last week Western Union confirmed that it was trialling Ripple's technology for international money transfers.
After reaching as high as US$1,641 this weekend, the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price has given back some gains but is still almost 9% higher than Friday's close at US$1,537 per coin. The bitcoin spin-off now has a market capitalisation of US$26.1 billion.
Litecoin (LTC) spent the weekend consolidating after a remarkable 44% gain over the last seven days. The Litecoin price is at US$220 this morning, giving it a market capitalisation of almost US$12.2 billion. The popular cryptocurrency has been on fire since the announcement of the upcoming launch of its LitePay payment processing technology and a hard fork this week which will see the launch of Litecoin Cash.
What's next?
With sentiment remaining very positive in the industry, I suspect there could be more gains ahead this week for the market.
However, it is worth remembering that things can change very quickly, making these cryptos extremely high risk investments.
