Cryptocurrency Market Update: Bitcoin and major altcoins are dormant after volatile week

• Bitcoin’s transaction fees are the highest in more than two years.
• The first digital coin needs to regain ground above $9,300.
• Altcoins are range-bound after a volatile week.

Transaction fees and mining difficulty on the rise

Bitcoin transaction fees reached on average $6.62, which is the highest level since February 2018. Moreover about 90MB of data are waiting for confirmation. Experts note that the rising fees are indicative of growing demand within Bitcoin’s network. 

Apart from that, the growing fees can be partially explained by the decreasing hash rate. It has plunged from 120 to 95 petahashes after Bitcoin’s halving. It is the deepest decline, and it means that it is more difficult to find blocks than usual. Consequently, the network capacity is decreasing, which leads to the overload and pushes fees higher.  

Top-3 cryptocurrencies price updates

Bitcoin (BTC) has recovered from the intraday low of $9,088, however, the bulls faced a brick wall on the approach to $9,300. This barrier stopped the upside momentum and pushed the price towards #9,160 by press time. The first digital coin has stayed mostly unchanged both on a day-to-day basis and since the beginning of Saturday.

Ethereum attempted to recover above $210.00 on Sunday, but quickly retreated to $206.50 by the time of writing. The second-largest digital asset needs to regain ground at least to $215.00 (the upper boundary of the recent consolidation channel) to improve the technical picture and allow for a sustainable move towards $220.00.

XRP/USD is locked in a range below $0.2000. The coin hit the intraday high at $0.2030 before fresh buying interest pushed it below the critical level.