Crypto market value hovers around $220 billion
Digital currency prices are trading mostly unchanged Friday, continuing what’s been a subdued week for the cryptocurrency market.
Bitcoin, BTCUSD, +0.38% the world’s largest digital currency, was changing hands at $6,548.31, down 0.1% since Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange.
Bitcoin is on track for one of its quietest weeks on record, trading within a 3.64%, range as of early afternoon in New York. Current moves represent the narrowest trading range for bitcoin since Dec. 18, 2016, thus far according to Dow Jones Market Data. Furthermore, Friday is the lowest volume week since February 2017, according to Bitfinex data provided by Trading View.
The total value of all cryptocurrencies was last at $218 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Speaking at the Delta Summit in Malta, Nigel Green, the founder of deVere Group, and a crypto proponent, said skeptics are undermining the potential of the industry. “Trust in the sector is routinely compromised by crypto demagogues who make wild and unsubstantiated claims and who sell themselves out to the highest bidder, regardless of facts and consequences,” he said in emailed remarks to MarketWatch.
“These are those high-profile financial traditionalists and institutions, who are likely to either have vested interests in maintaining the status quo or have no understanding and/or no desire to understand the unprecedented shift taking place right now,” Green said.
The collective group of coins other than bitcoin, known as altcoins, are mostly lower Friday. Ether ETHUSD, +1.64% was unchanged at $221.91, Bitcoin Cash BCHUSD, +1.08% has lost 1% to $509.70, Litecoin LTCUSD, +0.71% was down 1% at $57.75 and XRP XRPUSD, +1.03% the coin of the Ripple protocol, was trading at 51 cents, down 4%.
Bitcoin futures are showing small losses Friday. The Cboe Global Markets October contract XBTV8, -0.19% traded 0.1% lower at $6,535 and the comparable CME Group October contract BTCV8, -0.53% was down 0.5% at $6,525.
