As we pause to reflect on a year to remember (or, you know, forget), we’d like to take a look back at the news that caught our attention in 2020 and focus on the positives that helped us provide you with the best digital asset data.

Stories that Stole Headlines in 2020
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The price of Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $24,252 according to our aggregate pricing, as digital assets gained adoption from institutional investors and corporations throughout the year. The MVIS CCData Digital Assets 100 Index, which tracks the performance of the top 100 cryptoassets, shows a 188.83% rise year-to-date, a performance only topped by the top 20 digital asset index, which increased 158.4% YTD.

On March 12, the markets were shocked by the growing threat of COVID-19,and Bitcoin crashed 25% in just 30 minutes. The number of trades CCData received from exchanges more than doubled from around 800 trades/second to 1800 trades/second and our services remained stable in this time of crisis. The macroeconomic backdrop of unprecedented monetary expansion and negative real interest rates spurred on by COVID-19 had investors of all types looking more closely at hard assets like Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation.

In May, legendary billionaire macro investor Paul Tudor Jones II (aka “PTJ”), who is the Founder and the Chief Investment Officer of asset management firm Tudor Investment Corporation, made some very bullish comments about Bitcoin (as an inflation hedge) in his investment letter that was sent out to the clients of the $22 billion macro BVI Global Fund, which is managed by his asset management firm Tudor Investment.

PayPal surprised the cryptocurrency industry by announcing its plans to add Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Ether to its platform, and to enable cryptoassets as a funding source for digital commerce at its 26 million merchants. Eligible account holders in the U.S. can now buy BTC with PayPal, and the feature is set to roll out to other regions next year.

Following PayPal’s announcement, various publicly traded firms adopted Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset designed to act as a hedge against inflation. MicroStrategy now holds 70,470 BTC currently worth around $1.6 billion. Most recently, Ruffer Investment confirmed that as of December 16, it had a $743 million exposure to Bitcoin. Square and MassMutual also made the headlines for their significant investments in Bitcoin.

The growth of decentralized finance was one of the first meaningful trends in the year, with total value locked in DeFi growing from $700 million in January to over $15.3 billion in December. Maker’s dominance gradually dropped throughout the year as Aave, Compound, Uniswap, and Wrapped Bitcoin gained territory.

The growth of DeFi was followed by brand new exploits using advanced techniques such as flash loans to steal funds from protocols. Flash loans were used to manipulate protocols such as bZx, Origin Protocol, and Pickle Finance, highlighting the significant risks of this nascent sector. Major centralised cryptocurrency exchanges were also hacked this year, with KuCoin seeing hackers steal $200 million worth of cryptoassets. Most of the funds were reportedly recovered.

As demand for Bitcoin and DeFi kept growing, so did the demand for stablecoins. The total market capitalization of stablecoins (such as Tether, USDC and DAI) surpassed the $20 billion mark as investors poured billions of dollars into the crypto markets via this medium.

As Bitcoin made new all-time highs, Ethereum has also had a good year with the successful launch of the Beacon Chain, which is phase 0 in the multi-stage transition of Ethereum from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. If successful the upgrade will yield 1000x improvement in transaction throughput.
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New & Improved Data Products

Along with our continued efforts to provide a premium market data offering, we have launched a host of new data products and improved existing services. Amidst these developments, we have doubled down on our efforts to improve data quality:

• WebSocket API: Early this year we released a new and improved streaming API service that supports WebSocket connections. This servicecomes with new features, offering real-time trade, ticker, volume and level 2 order book data, as well as OHLC candles and the CCData Aggregate Index (CCCAGG).
• Blockchain data: We partnered with IntoTheBlock to provide historical blockchain data for more than 800 assets and additional metrics such as large transaction count, average transaction value and zero balance addresses.
• Free API Trial: Following many user requests, we introduced a free API Enterprise Trial, a fully customisable plan which includes access to the new WebSocket, full minute and trade data.
• Status monitoring page: We have improved our status page so you can keep tabs on any outages or degraded performance in our services as well as track updates on how we are improving the service.
• Cryptosheets integration: Our API integration with Cryptosheets made it easier for Excel users to access and work with CCData.
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Data Partnerships & Indices

In order to best serve the ever-growing demand for digital asset data, we have partnered with leading data vendors and created custom digital asset indices to meet the growing demand for regulated investment products. Our mission to help digital asset markets grow has been strengthened by our high-quality data products provided through the following partnerships:

• Singapore Exchange (SGX) and CCData launched crypto indicesunder the SGX iEdge index suite, namely the iEdge Bitcoin Index and iEdge Ethereum Index. This marked the entry of Asia’s leading multi-asset exchange into the digital currency asset class and the expansion of CCData’s data offering in Asia-Pacific.
• Utilising the cryptoasset index platforms provided by MV Index Solutions (MVIS) and CCData, Nomura Research Institute (NRI) and Intelligence Unit launched the NRI/IU Crypto-Asset index offering an investment solution for Japanese financial institutions as well as global investors.
• In partnership with MVIS we provided the underlying indices for the first public bitcoin fund and, more recently, ethereum fund, managed by 3iQ Corp., Canada’s largest digital asset investment fund manager. The funds are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and, as of December 18th, have a combined AUM of $460 million.
• We recently launched the Bitcoin Volatility Index, the world’s first index that measures the implied volatility of Bitcoin, in collaboration with leading industry expert Prof. Carol Alexander and her team at the University of Sussex. A first of its kind for digital assets, the index paves the way for a diverse set of leveraged, direct and inverse volatility ETFs and other exchange-traded products.
• We reached yet another milestone earlier this year when the MVIS CCData Bitcoin Index was licensed to Arrano Capital as the underlying index of Hong Kong’s first regulated cryptocurrency fund.
• The Nasdaq/CCData Aggregate Digital Asset Hourly, End-of-Day Prices product was launched on Quandl and provides hourly and end-of-day pricing data for the most liquid digital asset markets and serves data scientists, funds and financial institutions.
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Industry Research

There has been a significant focus over the past year in bringing greater rigour and transparency to the information available in the digital asset industry and our goal has been to provide market participants with high-quality data and analysis:

• Our monthly Exchange Review continues to offer traders, investors, regulators and service providers a reliable tool for monitoring trading activity in the exchange-traded market.
• We have continued to provide reliable metrics to evaluate cryptocurrency exchanges through our bi-annual Exchange Benchmark, which offers a comprehensive risk-assessment methodology that we expanded to include additional metrics as well as additional exchanges.
• We launched a new research series, the Digital Asset Management Review, a monthly report that tracks the most innovative institutional products in the industry.
• We published the Digital Asset Index Products report, which looked at the institutional markets and assessed roadblocks and opportunities for investors and fund managers looking to get exposure to digital assets.
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Events

Our flagship conference, the CCData Digital Asset Summit, drew an impressive roster of speakers and industry leaders to discuss the evolution of the digital asset marketplace and explore the financial instruments needed to accommodate it.

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• A New Economic Order: What is the Post-COVID-19 Financial Paradigm?— a two-part live webinar series in partnership with Bequant and Cointelegraph exploring the future of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in a post-COVID financial market.
• What Makes a Top-Tier Exchange? — a live webinar featuring top-ranked digital asset exchanges discussing CCDatas Exchange Benchmark and what makes a top-tier exchange.
• The Digital Asset Compliance & Market Integrity Summit (DACOM) — a four-part series of digital events in partnership with Solidus Labs, exploring the challenges of digital asset regulation, compliance, growth and industry maturity.

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Disclaimer: Please note that the content of this blog post was created prior to our company's rebranding from CryptoCompare to CCData.