Investing.com – Bitcoin continued its tentative comeback from its swing lower over the weekend but sentiment remained fragile amid sluggish fund inflows.
Bitcoin rose 1.35% to $6,286.6 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Bitcoin bounced back from a tumble to 2018 lows of $5,762.9 seen Sunday as some analysts said the sharp ebbs and flows in cryptos were somewhat expected as new technologies always "see swings in their values."
“The reality is that emerging technologies carrying radically new ideas will always see swings in their value," Matthew Newton, analyst at the trading platform eToro told The Independent.
Yet, market sentiment on cryptos remained fragile amid signs of a lack of investor demand as the total crypto market cap is billions of dollars short of the market cap seen prior to the tumble.
The total market cap of cryptocurrencies fell to about $257 billion, at the time of writing, from about $261 billion Friday.
The plunge in crypto market cap comes a few months after Barclays warned, citing survey findings, that bitcoin may have peaked amid a lack of speculative interest to support a move higher in the popular cryptocurrency.
“We estimate – with generous assumptions – that the ceiling for total crypto currency market capitalisation is between $660bn and $780bn,” Barclays said in a report in April.
Bitcoin's recovery was not helped, however, by remarks from Alibaba chairman Jack Ma, claiming bitcoin was likely a "bubble," according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
“It is…not right to become rich overnight by betting on blockchain,” Ma told reporters at the event, according to the WSJ. “Technology itself isn’t the bubble, but bitcoin likely is.”
Other large-cap cryptos followed bitcoin's recovery but Ripple's XRP came under pressure.
Ripple XRP fell 0.40% to $0.47800 on the Poloniex exchange, while Ethereum rose 0.45% to $459.03.