Hive (HIVE), the crypto that forked from Steem (STEEM) following disagreements over Tron CEO’s — Justin Sun — involvement in the project amid allegations of a hostile takeover is gaining increasing support from major crypto exchanges. Now ranked in the top-40 ‘coins’ by market capitalization, the Hive price has surged by more than 460% in less than a week.
Elsewhere in the crypto market, Ethereum (ETH) is up more than 50% since the start of the year amid reports of massive institutional interest in the second-ranked cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) appears to have shaken off the “Black Thursday” decline and is now in the middle of a triple resistance region which might determine the future BTC price trajectory as the halving event looms.
Binance Joins Hive Listing Spree as Price Moons
In a statement issued on Monday (April 27, 2020), crypto trading giant Binance announced the listing of Hive on its platform. According to the blog post, Binance is set to offer support for three HIVE trading pairs — HIVE/BTC, HIVE/BNB, and HIVE/USDT.
#Binance Will List @hiveblocks $HIVEhttps://t.co/YGD3stV5wN pic.twitter.com/WFTu9KqXq6
— Binance (@binance) April 27, 2020
Binance also revealed that Hive deposits and withdrawals will commence on Wednesday (April 29, 2020). The Binance announcement is the latest high-profile crypto exchange listing for Hive in recent weeks.
Major platforms like Bittrex, Probit, and Huobi Global are among the over the crypto exchanges offering support for Hive. On Monday, Huobi also began allowing withdrawals for Hive despite announcing the crypto’s listing back in March.
The flurry of exchange listing activity has also coincided with a bullish run for the Hive price with the 37th-ranked crypto up by more than 460% in less than a week. Hive’s price gain has caused its market capitalization to surge to $191.4 million — almost two-and-a-half times the market capitalization of Steem.
Hive pulling away from Steem would serve to justify proponents of the former especially after the events that led to the hard fork. Back in March, sections of the Steem community accused Tron CEO Justin CEO of attempting to orchestrate a hostile takeover of the network.
At the time, reports indicated that Sun used STEEM deposits held in exchanges like Huobi and Binance to influence voting on the platform as part of efforts to prevent a scheduled soft fork initiated to curtail Sun’s influence on the Steem blockchain. Later in March 2020, a section of the Steem community opposed to the Tron CEO completed a hard fork thus birthing the Hive blockchain.
Ethereum up 50% in 2020 Amid Massive Institutional Interest
Elsewhere in the crypto market, Ethereum is up by 50% so far this year amid a surge of interest from institutional investors. Calculations based on Grayscale Investment’s Ethereum shares shows that clients of the crypto asset fund manager have bought close to half of the 1.56 million ETH mined in 2020.
This massive buying has seen total ETH investments on Grayscale cross the $110 million mark in Q1 2020 alone. Indeed, Grayscale is on course for a record-breaking 2020 in investment inflows.
According to Grayscale’s Q1 2020 report, total investment inflow stands at $503.7 million. For the whole of 2019, Grayscale recorded $607 million worth of crypto investment mostly from institutional players like hedge funds.
For Bitcoin (BTC) — the top-ranked crypto by market capitalization — its price appears to have shaken off its mid-March 2020 sharp decline. As at press time, BTC has regained the $7,700 price mark and now has to surmount resistance between $8,000 and $8,400.
The Black Thursday crash has affected Bitcoin’s 2020 performance with the price growth only standing at 8%. Bitcoin’s upcoming halving in May is expected to provide a positive boost for the BTC price as the supply shock occasioned by the inflation drop could see demand far outstripping supply.
