Bitcoin rebounded on December 22, 2019 as cryptocurrency trading activity revived from the preceding day’s subdued weekend session. Kraken’s daily market report placed bitcoin at $7,401, up 3.10%, with $47.7 million traded. The exchange reported $62.1 million in turnover across all supported crypto and fiat markets.
An independent CoinMarketCap historical snapshot recorded bitcoin at $7,511.59, up 4.52% over its rolling 24-hour window. It assigned the asset a market capitalization of $136.09 billion, based on a reported circulating supply of 18,117,075 BTC, and displayed $23.13 billion in aggregated 24-hour volume.
The figures establish a meaningful daily recovery, but not a single official bitcoin closing price. Bitcoin traded continuously across multiple exchanges, currencies and time zones, and each provider applied its own venue coverage and measurement cutoff.
Turnover recovered alongside price
Kraken’s December 21 report had placed bitcoin at $7,178, down 0.31%, with $18.4 million traded. Total exchange turnover was $28.5 million. Comparing the two dated reports, Coinburn calculates that Kraken’s exchange-wide turnover increased approximately 117.9% on December 22, while reported bitcoin turnover increased approximately 159.2%.
Bitcoin represented about 76.8% of Kraken’s December 22 turnover, calculated by dividing the reported $47.7 million in bitcoin activity by the exchange-wide total of $62.1 million. That was higher than its approximately 64.6% share on December 21.
These calculations cover Kraken alone. They do not measure global spot volume, derivatives trading, order-book depth or the number of participating customers. Kraken’s reports also did not disclose exact daily cutoff times or separate trades by currency pair, so the changes should be treated as venue-specific comparisons rather than universal market totals.
The rebound extended across major assets
The move was broader than bitcoin on Kraken. Ether rose 3.55% to $132.30, bitcoin cash gained 4.69% to $196.30, litecoin advanced 5.19% to $41.99 and monero increased 4.95% to $47.70. Seventeen of the 19 non-stable crypto assets displayed in the report posted positive changes; tezos and augur were the two decliners.
CoinMarketCap’s snapshot likewise showed ether up 3.32%, bitcoin cash up 4.86% and litecoin up 4.84% over 24 hours. Tron registered the largest 24-hour gain among its 20 highest-ranked assets at 9.72%, while tezos declined 1.44%.
The longer window remained less convincing. CoinMarketCap showed bitcoin up 5.47% over seven days, but ether was down 7.13%, XRP was down 9.36%, bitcoin cash was down 4.90% and litecoin was down 3.68%. The December 22 advance therefore repaired part of the market’s recent weakness without demonstrating that the broader late-2019 decline had ended.
A rally without a verified catalyst
The surviving sources do not establish what caused the move. Contemporaneous coverage published on December 23 said the catalyst was not immediately clear, despite speculation about a pre-Christmas rally. No official announcement, regulatory decision, protocol change or reproducible on-chain event reviewed for this reconstruction can be shown to have triggered the buying.
The defensible event-day conclusion is narrower: bitcoin and most large crypto assets rose on December 22, while activity on Kraken recovered sharply from December 21. The differences between Kraken’s $7,401 indication and CoinMarketCap’s $7,511.59 snapshot underscore the fragmented market structure of the period. The rebound was observable; its cause and durability remained uncertain.
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