October 31, 2022

Cryptocurrencies Report Q3, 2022

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This article summarizes and discusses the original Q3 Cryptocurrency Report published by CoinGecko and intends to provide you with the information you can use to make better investment decisions. 

Crypto Market Cap Grew In Q3

Despite all of the negativity in the market, the total crypto market cap seems to have found a bottom at around $875B on the 19th of July. Since then we have seen the market move upwards of around $45B which is definitely good news!

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Q3 Market Cap Chart

Q3 Market Cap Chart

ALGO lost its position from the top 30 as ECT saw massive gains due to the Ethereum merge.

The total crypto market cap maintained its price correlation with the S&P 500 at 0.85 which is a decrease from Q2 where it was at 0.92. This serves as a reassurance to all crypto inventors that the traditional market is experiencing the same problems

Q3 Saw Minimal Growth For Stablecoins

The market cap of the top 15 stablecoins remained relatively similar to Q2 and lost 3% or $4.7B in value in Q3.

The leaders in the stablecoin market maintained their strong position, i.e.,  USDT, USDC, BUSD, DAI and FRAX. There were no new entrants nor exits. USDT saw a slight increase in market cap which may be due to the slight selloff of USDC.

US Dollar Index Soars

The US dollar index is a measure of the dollar's strength against a basket of six other influential currencies. The US dollar outperformed Bitcoin in Q3 even though bitcoin saw gains higher than many other asset class.

Due to interest rates hiking once again, most equities and assets such as crypto have experienced a negative hit due to investors holding cash. Even inflation proof assets such as Gold haven't seen price increases and this raises concern to how unpredictable the markets currently are.

Ethereum Merge Is A Success: Yet The Prices Fail To Correlate.

After the merge, ETH rallied up to $1982 almost reaching $2000 but then hit resistance and came tumbling down. Many believed, the merge was the most bullish news in ETHs history, yet the bearish news of the high CPI and the FOMC hike, combined with many traders buying the rumor and selling the news resulted in minimal price movement to the upside.

Even though ETH is not a deflationary asset as of yet, its daily net emission has dropped 95% post-merge. Gas prices have stayed the same low at around (~10 - 20 gwei) even though on-chain transactions have seen a small spike.

Ethereum has seen a +26% gain in Q3 which is an improvement since Q2 which will leave many investors with smiles on their faces.

DeFi Sees A 31% QoQ Increase

DeFi saw a pleasant increase of 31% from Q2 to Q3 which shows that the space is still growing strong. DEXs scooped a massive increase in market share putting it at 10.9B which is a 36.8% rise! This is a result of an uptick in volatility and trading volume of governance tokens of liquidity staking protocols. Another impressive feat in DeFi is that the fixed interest sector increased by 90% and this can be associated with the BarnBridge V2 launch.

NFT Trading Volume Falls -77% Since Q2

The top 5 NFT marketplaces (OpenSea, Magic Eden, LooksRare, X2Y2 and CryptoPunks) saw a -77% decrease in trading volume which validates the NFT winter that we are currently experiencing. 

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Top 5 NFT Marketplaces

Top 5 NFT Marketplaces

MagicEden was the only NFT marketplace that saw growth in September due to it doubling its MoM volume and dominance while the other marketplaces continued to fall. Therefore MagicEden went from 9% dominance all the way up to 22% dominance.

To Sum Up

We hope that you found this article informative and we want to reassure you that the crypto winter won't last forever and that soon we will be waking up every morning to the euphoria of our portfolios increasing in value ☺️

Remember,If you fail to plan, then your plan is to fail. How are you planning for the next bull run ? Let us know on our twitter

Thank you for taking the time to read this article.

We would like to give credits to CoinGecko for publishing the research.