One day after an expert predicted Bitcoin would fall to US$5,000 it proved the doubters wrong in the short-term by rising by 13.5% in a day. In dollar terms, a single Bitcoin rose from US$13,132 to US$14,905.
It's hard to pinpoint a reason for this strong rise, but my guess would be it's due to North Americans getting back to normal life after the Christmas break and piling into the cryptocurrency after thinking about it during the holiday.
It goes to show that Bitcoin is impossible to predict on a short-term basis because anything can happen over a 24-hour period. If you're a lucky trader then you can make double digit gains very quickly, but you can also make double digit losses very quickly too. Tomorrow the price could fall to US$12,000.
Bitcoin could be utterly old news in a few months' time as other altcoins gain prominence. Bitcoin cash has grown to US$2,729 after starting at US$555 earlier in the year.
Ethereum has also had a solid 2018 so far, starting at US$744 and growing by 17.2% to today's $872.
The altcoin that most cryptocurrency traders are now getting excited about is Ripple due to its real-life acceptance by institutions and its huge rise over the past year. The Ripple price has grown by 3.4% in the last day, 12% since the start of 2018 and 767% over the last 31 days.
It's important to remember that past performance is not an indicator of future performance with all of these cryptocurrencies, there's nothing supporting their meteoric rises except for the hype and speculation by the buyers and media.
The people who have made the real money bought Bitcoin years ago when it was unknown, or have launched their own altcoin for millions of dollars. Personally, I'd rather invest my hard earned cash in to quality shares like the ones below.
