Crypto market colored in red; Bitcoin languishes under $3,400

• Altcoins resumed the downside after a short-lived recovery.
• Bitcoin returned to $3,300 after an attempt to break above $3,600.

The cryptocurrency market was short-lived. Once again. Bitcoin and other major altcoins resumed the downside movement on Monday with the total capitalization of digital assets in circulation dropped below $110B, killing hopes to witness good bullish trend into the year-end. Prices bumped into resistance levels unable to instigate buying interest amid pessimistic sentiments that gripped the market.

Stephen Innes from Oanda is among those who prefer to hold off on calling the bottom on the cryptocurrency market.  He believes that we still do not have a convincing use case for Bitcoin and the absence of good non-speculative reasons to buy it makes the situation worse.

“Bitcoins have gone well beyond the ridiculousness of tulip bulb mania, It’s has been a disastrous year for cryptos, and by all indication, the current bear market could go from bad to worse with no fundamental or underlying reasons to buy BTC even more so when the only support offered up is a squiggly line on an analyst chart,” he commented.

Bitcoin has lost nearly 4 % since this time on Monday to trade at $3,380 at the time of writing. The first digital coin smashed both $3,500 and $3,400 handles after a failed attempt to settle above $3,600. Lack of buying interest may increase the short-term pressure on BTC that has already lost about 84% from its all-time high of $19,000.

Ethereum, the third largest digital asset, stays under critical $100. ETH/USD is changing hands at $90.00, having lost 3.7% in the recent 24 hours. The coin's market value is dropped at $9.4B, while the average trading volumes have settled at $1.7B, down from $2.5B at the end of the previous week. Ethereum network is getting ready for a pivotal Constantinopole update scheduled for January 2019, which puts the coin under additional pressure.

Ripple's XRP is trading marginally above $0.30 within the strong bearish trend. The coin is 3% lower on a day-on-day basis and mostly unchanged since the beginning of Tuesday. The second largest coin with market value $12.3B is dominated by bearish sentiments of the cryptocurrency market. Irresponsive to fundamental news, the coin is likely to stay volatile.

All major altcoins out of top-20 are in red, losing from 1% to 10% as bears are back at the driving wheel.