Bitcoin holding Strong while XRP, NEM, & BAT Surging Amidst Global Stock Market Plunge & Tech Giants Slump

Bitcoin is holding steady while a number of altcoins like XRP, Monero (XMR), IOTA (MIOTA), NEM (XEM), Zcash (ZEC), and Basic Attention Token (BAT) are making decent gains. Meanwhile, the global stock market is in rout as tech giants (FANG) dropped. The strong dollar driven by Fed raising rates, weak economy of China, and Brexit along with a weak euro is also leading the slump.

Bitcoin Steady, Crypto Market Enjoying the Greens

Bitcoin is steadfast at around $6,400 while oscillating between $6,250 and $6.920 for the past two months. At the time of writing, Bitcoin has been trading at $6,364 while registering the 24-hours loss of 0.60 percent. The volatility in the world’s leading cryptocurrency continues to fall.

Meanwhile, a number of altcoins are seeing the greens. Out of the top cryptocurrencies, XRP is leading with 2.72 percent gains at $0.517. While Ethereum (ETH) is in the red by 1.28% at $208.

Stellar is in the red by about 4 percent at $0.265 but is currently ranked at the 5th spot having replaced EOS.

Monero (XMR), and IOTA (MIOTA) are also in the green by 0.46%, and about 2% respectively.

NEM (XEM) is today’s biggest gainer with over 24% gains. Zcash (ZEC) is another under 20 top cryptocurrency by market cap that is surging at $132.88 with about 7.27 percent gains. Basic Attention Token (BAT) is rising by 3.73% at $0.255.

Meanwhile, Global Market & Tech Stocks Tumbling

A broad sell-off in the big names viz. Apple, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and General Electric pulled US stock lower. The cut down of shipment orders has the shares of Apple drop 5 percent. This, in turn, knocked off 600 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Lindsey Bell, investment strategist at CFRA says, ‘‘With the news out of the Apple supplier this morning, you have the market overall questioning the growth trajectory as we look out to 2019.”

After having a two-week winning streak, the markets are yet again falling. The S&P 500 Index dropped close to 55 points and Nasdaq composite slid 206.03 points. Japan’s Nikkei stock index eased 0.12 percent while Australian shares were down 0.08 percent. France’s CAC 40 fell 0.9 percent, Britain’s FTSE 100 lost 0.7 percent, and Germany’s DAX shed 1.8 percent.

Randy Frederick, vice president of trading derivatives at Charles Schwab shares, ‘‘The bull market is not over, the economic expansion is not over, but things are starting to wind down. We’re clearly getting into the late innings of the ball game.’’

In currency markets, the dollar index was up by 97.004 while euro, yen and British pound are in the red. Gold, Silver, and copper all lost about 0.3 to 0.9 percent. Industry and energy sectors are also down around 1 percent.

The strong US dollar is an integral factor to all these losses which is driven by Fed raising rates, weak economy of China and Italy, and Brexit along with a weak euro.

So, crypto and global stock market seems to be going in different directions which is strengthening the case for the crypto portfolio as shared by Mati Greenspan, senior analyst at eToro, “The fact that the current stock market rout has not had any effect whatsoever (positive or negative) on the crypto assets is an extremely positive sign. This is a prime example of how cryptos are uncorrelated and it only serves to increase their use case as a powerful tool for asset management.”