Bitcoin Price Ticks Up as US Tops List for BTC, Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH) Trading Volumes

Bitcoin is currently trading around $6,522 at time of writing, up .27%, according to WorldCoinIndex.

According to a new report from CoinShares, the risk of crypto investments appears to be lessening, based on the Sharpe ratio.

“As assets mature they are showing beginning trends of improving Sharpe ratios. While 2017 was more volatile than preceding years for many cryptoassets, the long term trend seems to point downwards while high returns in many cases remain.”

The Sharpe ratio is a performance indicator that expresses return on investment relative to the amount of risk. The report shows that crypto investors are entering a phase where they’re being more steadily rewarded for their investments while taking less risk.

The report also shows that the US remains the largest Bitcoin market in the world, with a trading volume of $83 billion in the first six months of 2018.

The data details which countries lead in trading volume for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and XRP.

Bitcoin Top 5 Markets

1. United States – $83.6 billion
2. British Virgin Islands (BVI) – $78.5 billion
3. Japan – $29.2 billion
4. Luxembourg – $27.9 billion
5. Russia – $18.5 billion

Litecoin Top 5 Markets

1. United States – $14.9 billion
2. British Virgin Islands (BVI) – $6.7 billion
3. Korea – $2.6 billion
4. Luxembourg – $2.1 billion
5. Russia – $.6 billion

Ethereum Top 5 Markets

1. United States – $48.1 billion
2. British Virgin Islands (BVI) – $29.3 billion
3. Korea – $11.8 billion
4. Luxembourg – $7.5 billion
5. Russia – $1.1 billion

XRP Top 4 Markets

1. Korea – $39.3 billion
2. British Virgin Islands (BVI) – $14.8 billion
3. US – $9.8 billion
4. Luxembourg – $8.2 billion

The data was measured on the top 15 exchanges by volume, spot only. No token-fee model volume was counted. Overall it provides some insight into the relative popularity of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and XRP across the globe. It also reflects how a country’s regulatory and legal framework for high-volume trading can impact the popularity of a digital asset. To that end, the US remains a leader in the crypto space, despite challenges and critics.

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The report also highlights key Bitcoin milestones.

Bitcoin Milestones

• Lightning nodes have grown from 54 to 1,482 by end of Q2
• Payment channels have grown from 105 to 5,666
• Total network payment liquidity has grown from 1.24 BTC to 26.2 BTC

Here are excerpts from its asset summaries for Litecoin, Ethereum and Ripple.

Litecoin

Many if not all of the upcoming Bitcoin development proposals will probably make their way into the Litecoin Core project, but Litecoin’s smaller development team means that changes are often easier and faster to implement.

Ethereum

Dapp specific state channels have already been built (e.g. FunFair, Spankchain), whilst the Raiden Network (equivalent to Bitcoin’s Lightning Network) is expected to launch its MVP for general payment channels on Ethereum later this year. Plasma is the brain-child of Vitalik Buterin and scales by enabling the creation of child-chains with independent consensus mechanisms to interact with the main-chain via smart contracts. OmiseGo have already built an MVP with plasma for their decentralised exchange and expect initial implementation in Q3 this year.

Ripple / XRP

Ripple announced that the average participant in the [xRapid] pilot saw cost reductions between 40% and 70% and that the average xRapid payment took just over 2 minutes. Industry heavyweights such as MoneyGram and Fleetcor participated in the pilot. This is a significant development, as xRapid is currently the only institutional service that requires participants to transact in XRP.

You can download the full report here.