CFD traders interested in cryptocurrency markets know that volatility comes as standard in the sector, but whether it’s for use in detailed technical analysis or simply for utilizing a broader news-based strategy, data needs to be collected and interpreted. February 2019 had a selection of both winners and losers in terms of prices gains when it comes to digital coins, and a relatively rocky set of movements offered something of a welcome improvement from January’s action.
The year’s first month only saw one digital coin gain a net increase, namely Tron, which seems to buck trends quite regularly. In contrast, February saw Bitcoin ending the month up for the first time since July 2018. Of the top ten coins listed by market capitalization, only two ended the month down overall.
Winners
Data from Coincodex.com clearly sets out the winners and losers for February. Out of the top fifty coins ranked by market capitalization, Binance Coin was the star performer with a net increase of 58.94%. The dramatic upswing has several possible influencing factors behind it, but one of the main ones is sure to be that Binance Launchpad is being increasingly used for launching new tokens.
Recently on the platform, Fetch.AI’s sale hit its hard cap of USD 6 million dollars by selling more than 69 million tokens in a sensational short time of 22 seconds. In what some are seeing as yet another positive sign for the wider acceptance of crypto, smartphone giant HTC announced that they will be selling their flagship blockchain phone model for BNB as well as for Litecoin. The Exodus 1 could turn out to be a very big thing for cryptocurrencies indeed.
Maker was the second big winner of the month seeing a net increase in value of 55.06%. Cryptocurrency exchange OasisDEX was down in maintenance mode for some of the time, and although it used to make up a large percentage of trading volume for the coin and this might have proved to be a problem, in fact, the reverse was true.
Users were forced to buy MKR on other exchanges and in turn this built up liquidity levels, with Bitinka being the exchange that mainly replaced the volumes lost on Oasis DEX. Komodo was another big winner of the month, increasing by 54.2%. Ontology saw a hike of 50.02% and EOS gained 48.81%. ICON moved onto the month’s winning list with a rise of 36.09% and Global Utility Token was up by 26.36%.
Losers
One of the signs that the crypto-coin sector as a whole had a better month was that February’s losses were significantly smaller than those that were endured in January. The biggest loser of the month was Zilliqa, which suffered a net loss of 21.74%. In January, the month’s biggest loss was almost double that figure. Zilliqa’s downturn came despite Binance announcing that it is launching a ZIL/USDT trading pair and the lack of any negative news around the project as a whole.
NEM was the biggest loser in January and things weren’t much better last month as it came in behind Zilliqa as the second biggest loser of February, recording a loss of 18.21%. Tron reversed its fortunes from the previous month when it had an increase in value to lose in February, joined by Holo which had also performed well the previous month. XEM, Stellar and Bitcoin SV also all feature on February’s losers list.
Top 100 and 200 winners and losers
While the previous selections above mark out the most popular coins, the massive crypto market is popular with many CFD forex traders due to its extensive and ever-growing nature. Even with eyes focused on a wider range of coins, of the top 100 tokens by market capitalization, BNB moved up to sixth spot, while the top four all gained by more than double their price.
BitTorrent Token with a net increase of 70.30% hit the fifth spot of the top 100, but looking further down the field to the next 100, InoCoin increased in value by 360.28%, while Cosmo Coin saw an increase of 201.21%. Support for the latter coming from the Samsung Galaxy S10 no doubt helped.
The biggest loser of the month amongst the top 100 by market cap was Revain, which dropped 43.77%, while MimbleWimble implementation Grin lost 67.48% in February to become the biggest loser out of the top 200.
CFD implications
For CFD traders, the appeal of crypto markets could be made no clearer than by studying this data. The fact that such a wide range of assets can have considerable gains and losses over a relatively short space of time makes them perfect for the fast-paced environment of contract for difference. On top of that, some of the big names often buck trends and there is really no ‘blue chip’ equivalent when it comes to digital coins.
This means that not only is there plenty of scope for successful CFD trades to be made, there is also a long-term future in the sector that is almost certain to see a wider acceptance and a corresponding increase in volumes. This all comes together to mean that anyone who takes the time to understand the movements of the market now will no doubt be able to put this knowledge and experience to good use further down the line.