Crypto Weekly Market News

As those in the U.S. prepare to leave for a long Labor Day weekend, cryptocurrency markets are wrapping up a very bullish week. The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies currently sits at $176 billion, as measured by CoinCap.io, and trading volumes are strong and steady. Breaking things out by currency, the granddaddy of crypto, bitcoin, rocketed up $500 this week as traders eyed the first successful SegWit transactions. A lull in news surrounding the potential SegWit2X hardfork kept bears to a minimum and allowed prices to rise relatively unhindered. At the moment bitcoin prices are just crossing the $4,800 mark on most exchanges but have even reached as high as $4,928 on CEX.io. Everything appears to be gearing up for a test of the $5,000 mark as early as this weekend.

In the ether markets, prices have also risen strongly from around $330 to just shy of $400. Momentum is up, and could possibly result in ether prices testing all-time-highs that were set earlier this summer. A continuous stream of new ICO projects has helped fuel the recent rally and, despite warnings from the U.S. SEC, seems likely to continue unabated in the near term.

As I wrote in the last post, the OmiseGo airdrop will be beginning on Monday and will continue for about a week, or until all of the tokens have been distributed. Prices of OMG have risen in anticipation. As of this writing OMG is trading at $12.24 and now stands as the 12th largest cryptotoken by market capitalization.

Litecoin has tagged along with the broader rally adding about 40% this week and reaching new all-time-highs in the upper $70's. While Bitcoin's little brother has never received nearly as much attention a $4 billion market cap is nothing to sneeze at. News of ongoing testing and development of a Lightning Network implementation has likely encouraged traders to take positions in the currency on hopes of seeing another rally like the one that occurred when the network activated SegWit.