By Staff Writer
The rise of the coronavirus has had a number of interesting effects on cryptocurrency assets, and unlike Bitcoin, not all of them have been depressed.
For example, the market cap of Binance USD (BUSD) has more than doubled, rising from $68m to roughly $190m. Similarly, Circle’s USD stablecoin jumped from roughly $440m to $727m over the same time period; Paxos Standard (PAX) grew from $200m to $246m.
David Waslen, chief executive of HedgeTrade, pointed out throughout this period, “most altcoins fell at the same time,” Waslen explained, “but there were definitely some that had a quicker comeback than Bitcoin during a time when stocks were bottoming.”
When considering the reaction that altcoins have had to the coronavirus fallout, however, Waslen said that it’s important to consider the direction they were headed before the pandemic began: “there’s a pretty big difference between altcoins in 2016-2017 and today, where you now have an immense blockchain infrastructure that is in a constant state of improvement,” he said.
Interestingly, two additional assets that have warranted attention are Monero and Zcash, which Waslen said “have taken on an ‘outlier’ status.” Both of these assets, which are two of the crypto industry’s most popular privacy-focused coins, have seen substantial increases in price since the beginning of the year.
