Major Coins See Mix of Red and Green as BTC Price Stays Above $8,000

Tuesday, Oct. 8 — The top 20 digital currencies are in mixed shape after a tide of green earlier in the day, with Bitcoin (BTC) trying to keep above $8,000, according to data from Coin360.

Cryptocurrency market daily overview. Source: Coin360

Bitcoin stayed above the $8,000 threshold during the day, during which its highest price point was $8,355 and the lowest was $8,157. At publishing time, the leading cryptocurrency is trading at about $8,205, having gained 0.58% on the day.

Earlier on Tuesday, Cointelegraph reported that Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell had criticized the “attractive mystery” that fear of a 51% attack on Bitcoin entails, arguing that it betrays a fundamental lack of understanding about the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin 24-hour price chart. Source: Coin360

Ether (ETH) is slightly up as well, by 1.26% over the day, and is currently trading at about $179.4. The altcoin has not registered notable price fluctuations, generally staying near the $180 price mark.

Ether 24-hour price chart. Source: Coin360

Conversely, the second-largest altcoin XRP has registered a drop of 2.02% on the day to trade at about $0.273 at publishing time. On its weekly chart, XRP is reporting 7.73% growth and a 5.81% increase over the past month.

It comes as Ripple's Brad Garlinghouse, which is behind the XRP token, argued that Facebook will fail to launch its Libra digital currency before 2023. 

XRP’s 24-hour price chart. Source: Coin360

None of the other coins on the top 20 list are showing double-digit growth, but some of them have outperformed BTC and ETH.

Cosmos (ATOM), Tron (TRX), and Dash (DASH) are major gainers, being up by 7.05%, 3.04% and 2.87% over the day respectively.

Recent cryptocurrency-related developments

Digital asset custodian of software firm Anchor Labs has stated that it became the first entity qualified to support institutional custody for Telegram’s Gram (GRM) token. Investors will reportedly be able to purchase existing Grams on the open market as well as new Grams from the Telegram Open Network (TON) Reserve.

EOS developer Block.one announced the release of version 2.0 of the EOSIO open-source protocol. EOSIO is a blockchain-based smart contract protocol used to develop and host decentralized applications. It employs a consensus model called delegated proof-of-stake.

The European Union’s finance commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis pledged to propose new rules to regulate cryptocurrencies such as Facebook’s Libra. “Europe needs a common approach on crypto-assets such as Libra. I intend to propose new legislation on this,” Dombrovskis said.