Bitcoin losing its dominance in cryptocurrency market
Six years ago bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency people talked about. Now, there are almost 1,400 of them. While remaining the locomotive of digital money, bitcoin has been gradually losing its preeminence in the market.
Bitcoin had a very good year. In addition to appreciating by more than 1,300 percent, it is now trading on two futures exchanges and has lured institutional investors from Wall Street. However, it is no longer the only game in town.
At the beginning of the year, bitcoin had an 88 percent share of the cryptocurrency market. Ethereum had only four percent, and bitcoin cash was non-existent.
As 2017 comes to an end, the market share of bitcoin shrunk by half to 43.5 percent.
Ethereum has faced similar setbacks. While it was predicted to de-throne bitcoin, its market share has fallen from about 32 percent in June to near 13 percent by the end of the year. Bitcoin cash has never had a share exceeding 11.5 percent.
The reason is that with the development of the market, new digital currencies arose, making investors diversify their cryptocurrency portfolios. The cryptocurrency market is very broad, and different currencies offer different solutions for investors.
“IOTA crypto is about microtransactions without commissions. Ethereum is good for "smart contracts," dash and the like are autonomous and so on. Bitcoin is used not only as a financial asset or as a means of exchange, but also as an alternative currency necessary for investing in competitive and complementary projects of the cryptocurrency industry,” Mikhail Mashchenko, an analyst at the social network for investors eToro in Russia and CIS told RT.
According to the analyst, that is why the cryptocurrencies are here to stay. Even if bitcoin fails, the others won’t.
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