The Biggest Crypto Winners and Losers of 2019

Escalating global events such as the trade war between the United States and China have shifted investors' point of view on the utility of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but there is still a lot to be done even as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission continues to turn down every other Bitcoin ETF proposal.

At the beginning of 2019, the cryptocurrency industry was just recovering from the so-called crypto winter of 2018.Fortunately, Bitcoin kicked off the year with a bullish trend that resulted in an approximate price increase of 11% higher by the end of the first quarter.

"Bitcoin's price is up significantly in 2019 more buyers than sellers on a net basis this year."

As the trading volume and market capitalization increased throughout the second quarter of the year, Bitcoin led the market with a 165% gain as its price surged from $4,103 to $10,888.

Bitcoin's market dominance increased from 54.6% to 65%.Among the reasons that have promoted Bitcoin's continued growth despite a struggling market is the view that the digital currency can act as a hedge in the wake of increasing global uncertainty.

Over the third quarter of the year, a bearish outlook emerged as Bitcoin's price decreased significantly as 100 billion in market capitalization was lost.

Even as the market struggled to gain ground against the bears, Bitcoin not only closed the quarter with the least amount of loss but also increased its market dominance by 5.4%. Ultimately, of all cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin's performance has been the best so far.

Compared to assets from other markets, Bitcoin's performance throughout the year is still far from tenuous.

Bitcoin ETF's continual rejection by the SEC Even though U.S. regulators have always left a window for the possibility of approving Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the future, up until now, every single attempt to license a Bitcoin ETF has been met with failure.

While speaking to Cointelegraph on the realistic timeline of the first Bitcoin ETF approval, Charles Lu, the CEO of the Findora fintech toolkit provider said, "For a Bitcoin ETF proposal to gain SEC approval, the sponsor will need to prove that real price discovery is happening as opposed to market manipulations." In Lu's opinion, this will not happen anywhere soon, since the SEC would require "Surveillance sharing agreements" with the big exchanges.