Last month, Bitconnect coin, better known to the community as BCC, reached an all-time high price at $59.24. Within a three-month period, the price of BCC increased from $1.76 to $59.24, recording a staggering growth rate of 3,265 percent.
Since the beginning of 2017, the cryptocurrency market demonstrated an exponential growth rate, achieving a historic milestone on last month by surpassing $100 billion in market cap. At the time of reporting, the cryptocurrency market cap is valued to be $113 million, with bitcoin being 37.8 percent of the market.
“The fact that these gains have come from currencies other than Bitcoin are a good sign that this is less of a bubble and more of a resurgence of interest in crypto,” said Techcrunch journalist Fitz Tepper.
A major catalyst that contributed to the rapid growth of the cryptocurrency market was the global adoption of bitcoin and Ethereum, two of the largest cryptocurrencies with a combined market cap of $77.6 billion. Since mid-2016, the demand toward bitcoin as a safe haven asset and digital gold surged as mainstream media outlets began to provide extensive coverage on the performance of bitcoin.
The drop brought down the cryptocurrency to below $200, which is the first instance of returning to this level since 30th of May 2017. During the trading day, the lowest point was reached at around $190, signaling a drop in the value of 17% that took place in this period.
After that, the price continued to correct itself in the coming hours, bouncing to $210 but then coming back to below $200. All of this makes for a more than 50% slump since the all-time high.
At that point, a lot of excitement related to the cryptocurrency was directly connected to the ICOs which were only starting to present itself as a business opportunity. This, coupled with the mainstream media focus that was provided to ETH made it rise more aggressively than it was really sustainable for a longer period than just a couple of weeks, as many predicted. Now, it appears that their predictions have been proven right as the correction still seems to be ongoing.
International newspapers including the Wall Street Journal continuously featured bitcoin on their front page, comparing the price trend of bitcoin to that of gold and the US dollar, the world’s largest asset and reserve currency.
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As interest and demand toward digital currencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum increased, a growing number of investors started to take interest in other cryptocurrencies in the market such as Litecoin, Ethereum Classic and Bitconnect that are amongst the largest cryptocurrencies and networks.
At the time of reporting, the market cap of Bitconnect, a crypto-network better known for its bitcoin lending platform, remains at around $346 million, making the Bitconnect network the 22nd largest cryptocurrency and blockchain network globally.
Bitconnect’s three-month growth since April has been larger than that of most cryptocurrencies including Ethereum. Since April, Ethereum has recorded a 858.9 percent increase in price, from $39 to $374, triggering the interests of investors that have become enthusiastic of the launch of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) and the rise of initial coin offerings (ICOs).
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