CCData's weekly ‘Chart of the Week’ highlights topical digital asset developments with vital commentary and analysis.
This week's Chart of the Week highlights the latest Bitcoin halving and its impact on daily miner revenue.Bitcoin halvings, which happen roughly every four years or every 210,000 blocks, reduce mining block rewards by half — in this case, from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. This reduction can lead to decreased revenue for miners, assuming transaction fees and the underlying price of Bitcoin remain consistent.While historically rising Bitcoin prices have offset the impact of reduced BTC issuance, transaction fees are expected to become increasingly significant for miners with the rising demand for Bitcoin block space.Shortly after the recent halving, daily transaction fees surged to 1,257 BTC —a dramatic 1,336% increase from the average daily fee of 88 BTC since August. This was primarily driven by the heightened interest in Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes.
For context, since August 2023, there have only been 24 days out of 267 where daily block rewards accounted for less than 80% of total daily mining revenue. The lowest percentage recorded was 24.56% on the day of the halving, when BTC daily transaction fees surged to 1,257 BTC, compared to daily block rewards of 409 BTC.
This week’s Chart of the Week highlights May’s correlation of daily returns between BTC, ETH and the SP500, falling to 15.8% and 18.2%, respectively, the lowest level since August 2022.
Digital assets have benefitted from a significant price appreciation following signs that tight monetary policy and high interest rates may soon reach their peak. This comes after the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, causing a stir in the banking system, and amplifying the interest in digital assets.
The depegging of USDC and regulatory issues with BUSD has led to Binance converting $1 billion of their Industry Recovery Initiative funds to BTC, ETH, and BNB, triggering further buy pressure for digital assets.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we explore the cryptocurrency market's response to recent political developments, which have introduced varying levels of volatility as reflected in the open interest figures. Bitcoin, while remaining the dominant digital currency, saw its open interest decrease by 3.6%, dropping from approximately $26.15bn to $25.21bn from the 14th until the 16th of April.
Ethereum experienced a relatively smaller decline in open interest, down by 1.2%. The Altcoin sector displayed more pronounced fluctuations with Solana taking a substantial hit, with open interest plummeting by 14.8%. Overall, these shifts in open interest underscore the sensitivity of cryptocurrency markets to global political dynamics, which tends to act as a reflexive asset class to uncertainty, especially over a weekend when traditional markets are closed.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we explore the ongoing decline of Ethereum (ETH) in value compared to Bitcoin (BTC), which hit its lowest closing price since April 2021 on April 4th 2024. This downward trend highlights the shifting dynamics within the cryptocurrency market, where Bitcoin seems to be strengthening its position as the leading digital asset.
The decline of Ethereum against Bitcoin underscores investor sentiment and market trends that favour Bitcoin's store of value over Ethereum's broader utility at this time. This trend could reflect a variety of factors, including market volatility, shifts in investor strategies, and new developments within the blockchain ecosystem. As the cryptocurrency landscape evolves, it remains to be seen how these trends will unfold and what they will mean for the future of Ethereum and its position relative to Bitcoin.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we examine the impact of Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade, which launched on March 13 to significantly lower fees for Layer 2 solutions. Platforms such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base benefited from marked fee reductions, which in turn has catalysed an upsurge in on-chain activity. Interestingly, while the main focus was on L2 networks, a secondary yet notable effect has been observed on Ethereum's Layer 1 (L1) transaction fees, which have seen a modest decrease since the upgrade.
Prior to the Dencun upgrade, Layer 2 transactions significantly influenced Ethereum's gas fees. The upgrade introduced "Blobs," a new data type that substantially lowered these costs, indirectly reducing Ethereum's overall gas fees. This marks a key advancement in Ethereum's scaling initiatives, setting the stage for further anticipated improvements!
In this week's Chart of the Week, we analyse the liquidity for BTC trading pairs on centralised exchanges since the asset began its uptrend in price. The 1% market depth for BTC trading pairs on centralised exchanges has decreased by 58.4% to 3,793 BTC since 2023.
This trend intensified following the introduction of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. in early January, with liquidity dipping by 1,171 BTC. The declining liquidity on centralised exchanges, coupled with the increasing demand for the asset as indicated by the rising price action, suggests a potential uptick in volatility. Such conditions often precede large breakout movements in Bitcoin's price, echoing patterns observed in the days following the halving in previous cycles.
Bitmex's Spot XBT-USDT pair experienced a significant flash crash, causing the pair's price to drop to as low as $8,900 overnight. The order book recorded over 500BTC being sold below $60k, with a large SELL order of 100 BTC executing ~$10,000, indicating extreme losses for the entity who was selling at these prices, due to severe slippage to the tune of millions of dollars.
It’s likely that as price traded below a certain range, market makers pulled their liquidity which emptied the books, exacerbating the slippage being incurred as market depth reduced drastically. At first glance, it seems this type of extreme price action may be the result of a malfunctioning algorithm.
CCData’s CCIX volume calculation, which accounts for anomalous pricing with its 24-hour volume-weighted average calculation, prevented these market failures from impacting a composite BTC price. Additionally, Bitmex's derivatives pricing was not affected by the flash crash as a result of their usage of composite pricing, preventing liquidations and protecting futures traders.
This week's Chart of the Week casts a spotlight on Bitcoin's monthly performance since 2020. Since December, Bitcoin has recorded five consecutive positive monthly returns for the first time since Q1 2021.
In February, Bitcoin also recorded its highest monthly returns since December 2020, with an increase of 41.3%. With Bitcoin reaching new all-time highs in March, the asset is poised to extend its positive monthly streak to six months for the first time since March 2021.
Today, as BTC makes a new all-time high of $69244 according to CCIX, this week's chart of the week focuses on the significant long bias in the future's market, identified by abnormally high funding rates. Funding rates provide an indication of the prevailing market sentiment, showing the level of premium or discount of the futures price compared to the spot price.
Long position holders pay short position holders every funding period when funding rates are positive, and vice-versa. Observing the trend of substantially increasing funding rates highlights the imbalance of long positions on exchanges, and is a good indicator of frothiness and increased risk taking.
Binance spot market share has jumped from 31.9% at the start of 2024 to 35.7% as of 27th February 2024, its highest spot market share since August 2023. Numerous factors are likely to have driven this gain, including the zero-fee BTC-FDUSD trading pair, which has attracted significant interest to become the highest-volume trading pair in the market.
Additionally, the exchange still maintains the deepest liquidity amongst the exchanges, and has improved its brand image significantly since Richard Teng took over as a result of the SEC lawsuit settlement in November 2023. So far this year, Binance has averaged $411bn in monthly spot volumes, highlighting the heightened trading activity as a result of bullish market conditions.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we analyse the month-to-date returns of popular AI tokens. With the launch of OpenAI's first text-to-video product and reports of its founder seeking a capital raise of nearly $7tn to reshape the global semiconductor industry, attention has shifted to AI tokens in the crypto world.
Bittensor (TAO), which aims to create a decentralised machine learning network and has grown to be the largest AI token by market cap in recent months, saw its price rise by 36.8% to $640 in February. Meanwhile, AGIX, FET, and NMR, among other AI tokens, have returned healthy gains, seeing their prices rise 92.6%, 61.6%, and 63.1% respectively this month.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine the surge in market liquidity and the notable increase in Bitcoin's price, which recently surpassed the $50k mark. However, despite these developments, the anticipated altcoin season has yet to materialise.
When comparing the performance of altcoins to Bitcoin, it's clear that Bitcoin has outperformed them, with most altcoins yielding returns that fall short of Bitcoin's. This trend is likely driven by cumulative net inflows into BTC Spot ETFs in the U.S.. Notably, February 13th saw approximately $630 million in inflows within a single day, the largest to date. The chart illustrates Bitcoin's dominance continuing to rise as prices increase, a positive indicator for the health and sustainability of this market expansion.
In this week's Charts of the Week, we look into how, for the first time since November 8 2023, Binance's Bitcoin open interest has surpassed that of the CME. The CME had previously experienced a notable rise in #Bitcoin open interest, driven by optimism surrounding the potential for a Bitcoin spot ETF.
Since the announcement of the spot Bitcoin ETF on January 10th, open interest in the CME has fallen by 32.9%. The recent decrease can be linked to withdrawals from BITO, which invests in CME BTC futures, as investor focus shifts towards spot Bitcoin ETFs.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we observe how the open interest for #BTC futures on the CME fell by 23.0% to $4.96 billion after reaching a multi-year high of $6.45 billion on the day of the approval of the US Spot Bitcoin ETF. Meanwhile, the open interest in Binance and OKX, the top two derivatives exchanges by volume, has increased by 2.40% and 8.97% to $4.42 billion and $1.79 billion, respectively.
Despite this decline, CME remains the largest derivatives exchange by open interest in BTC futures, with the decline in open interest coinciding with the drawdown in the price of #Bitcoin following the launch of the Spot Bitcoin ETF in the US.
In this week's Charts of the Week, we look at how #Bitcoin has breached its recent resistance level, falling below the $39,000 mark for the first time since December 2, 2023. This decline was anticipated, given the losses suffered by short-term holders and the selling pressure resulting from the outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin ETF, which was recently amplified by FTX selling their $1B #GBTC Shares, according to Coindesk.
Despite the significant drop in 7-day rolling volumes following the announcement of an Exchange-Traded Fund approval, the average size of trades has remained relatively stable. This indicates the increased influence of institutional investors and long-term holders.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we examine how BTC's Open Interest on CME has reached a record high of $5.75 billion, surpassing its previous peak in October 2021. This increase aligns with the approaching ETF deadline, indicating a rise in institutional demand and a heightened interest in speculating on ETF outcomes. This trend has propelled CME's market share to 34.5% as of January 5th.
In early January, BTC’s funding rate soared as speculative activities increased, however, a subsequent decline in Open Interest normalised these rates. Despite this, the market sentiment remains predominantly bullish, supported by a persistently positive funding rate.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we look at the open interest for BTC instruments on centralised exchanges which has been on an uptrend since August, recording a multi-year closing high of $14.6bn on January 2nd as markets anticipate the potential approval of spot Bitcoin ETF applications by the SEC.
However, with leverage and funding rate being high, the market is more susceptible towards sudden liquidation cascade as reflected in the price action of BTC, which wiped nearly $1.28bn in open interest within 2 hours as the price of Bitcoin following reports of a possible delay in the ETF approval.
This week's Chart of the Week highlights the top 10 highest-scoring projects in our ESG Benchmark, created in partnership with CCRI (Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute), to evaluate ESG parameters and provide ratings for top digital assets.
Having recently released our latest results, we find Ethereum maintaining the top spot, followed by Solana and Polkadot, with slight improvements noted across the board. Cumulatively, the top 10 all score either AA or A, with scores comfortably above the 65 score threshold required to achieve 'Top-Tier' status.
This week's Chart of the Week highlights two exchanges, Bybit and OKX, which reached all-time highs in terms of combined Spot/Derivatives market share. Bybit now captures an aggregated 11.94%, whilst OKX captures 20.2% in November - a combined market share of over 32%!
This achievement for both exchanges highlights the shifting CEX landscape, since Binance recently agreed on a settlement with the DOJ, and Coinbase's SEC case remains unsolved. Both OKX and Bybit were the only exchanges to score AA in our latest Centralised Exchange Derivatives Benchmark, underscoring the uptick in demand observed in November.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we observe how the open interest for BTC futures on CME rose by 20.9% to a yearly high of $4.11 billion in November. The exchange has now achieved the largest market share for open interest in BTC futures, surpassing Binance, which currently holds an open interest of $3.76 billion.
The rise in open interest on the CME exchange highlights the increase in institutional interest in Bitcoin as the markets anticipate the potential approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF next year.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we examine the market's reaction from yesterday when Bloomberg broke the news that the US is seeking more than $4 billion to settle its case against Binance. The exchange has been embroiled in legal challenges with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) since March and June, respectively. Accusations include operating an illegal derivatives exchange and promoting non-compliant actions, such as using VPNs and offshore entities to evade geographical restrictions. Overall, this news initially led to a negative reaction before BNB bounced 15% in a matter of minutes as the market digested the possibility of a resolution to this overhang that has existed since Q1 of this year. More clarity for Binance is bullish for BNB and the market, as evidenced by the intraday performance captured by CCData.
The news casts a light at the end of the tunnel for Binance, with the potential for a full resolution in the coming months, despite the heavy charges. If the reports are accurate, it also removes a lot of uncertainty from the market, given that more severe actions against Binance could be detrimental to the industry.
In this week's Chart of the Week, Solana emerges as a standout performer among assets, delivering impressive returns over the course of this year.
The asset's market dominance by monthly trading volume has surged to an all-time high of 5.54% in November (as of the 13th). On November 11th, Solana accounted for 8.85% of all trading volumes on centralised exchanges, surpassing the previous all-time high of 8.66% recorded on September 9th, 2021.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we explore the ongoing optimism in the digital asset market, which has seen yearly highs consistently recorded across various sectors. Numerous asset baskets have maintained tight return profiles, indicating a robust overall market.
Although correlations remain high, the AI category, which includes $AGIX and $FET, has dominated returns since the rally began, posting an aggregated 48.7% increase since October 1st. Following closely behind, Infrastructure tokens like LINK and FIL have contributed to an aggregated return of 44.8%, breaking multi-year ranges in the process.
In this week's "Chart of the Week," we examine October’s bullish trend in digital asset management products, as Assets Under Management (AUM) experienced a surge of 24.8%, reaching a new yearly peak on October 30th.
This level of growth has not been observed since May 2022, underscoring the prevailing optimism within the digital asset industry. The upward trajectory in Bitcoin's price, which has seen a remarkable 28.1% increase throughout October, has significantly contributed to this positive momentum.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we look at last night's breakout move. Bitcoin's spot price reached a 15-month high, with the CCCAGG price of BTC-USD pairs reaching a high of $35,183. CCData's trade data shows that the price of the BTC-USDT pair on OKX reached as high as $35,919 at 10:30 pm UTC, trading at a premium compared to other venues due to increased demand and varying liquidity.
The pair traded a volume of $352 million during the hour, second only to the BTC-USDT pair on Binance, which traded a volume of $577 million in the same hour.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine the narrowing Grayscale GBTC discount, which decreased to 14.8% in October, the lowest level since December 2021. This represents a 30.4% increase in the trust's net asset value as positive sentiment surrounding the ETP proves to be an attractive arbitrage opportunity for investors.
The discount is likely to continue diminishing with the ongoing anticipation surrounding Grayscale's case for the conversion of GBTC Trust into an ETF product. The SEC recently decided not to appeal against the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' August verdict overturning the regulator's decision to reject Grayscale's attempts to convert its trust into an ETF.
This week's Chart of the Week shows that BTC's dominance has significantly increased since the beginning of October. This uptick in dominance has been observed as major alternative cryptocurrencies have struggled against Bitcoin, a trend typically seen during bear markets.
BTC's dominance, particularly when compared to ETH, has been steadily increasing, with ETH experiencing a negative return of 7.45% against Bitcoin. Additionally, other cryptocurrencies, such as LINK, DOT, and AAVE, have also witnessed declines of 12.9%, 8.87%, and 7.23%, respectively, indicating a broader trend of underperformance among these assets in relation to Bitcoin.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we take a look at ETH futures, which began trading on October 2nd, but experienced lower-than-expected trading volumes. This disappointed many investors who had anticipated an increase in assets under management (AUM) for ETH products following the approvals.
Over the initial two days of trading, the total trading volumes for the products amounted to $2.53m. This trend was consistent with what was observed in September, where trading volumes significantly decreased, marking the lowest volume recorded in the year 2023.
In September, FDUSD, a stablecoin issued by a subsidiary of First Digital Limited, a financial firm headquartered in Hong Kong, experienced a significant increase in trading activity on Binance.This surge in volume coincided with Binance's decision to eliminate trading taker fees for BTC-TUSD pairs and the announcement of the discontinuation of major BUSD pairs on the exchange. Additionally, Binance introduced zero trading fees for BTC-FDUSD spot and margin pairs, further contributing to the rise in FDUSD trading volumes.
Using a 7-day moving average, we observed that the trading volume of BTC-FDUSD witnessed an astonishing 905% growth since the beginning of September (data up till the 25th). In contrast, during the same period, BTC-TUSD and BTC-BUSD experienced declines of 92.3% and 45.7%, respectively.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we are examining the significant surge in the price of The Open Network (TON) since August, a period during which it has appreciated by over 100%.
This surge coincided with the launch of its TON-based wallet on Telegram, which offers custodial options. While Bitcoin and other major altcoins experienced minor drawdowns in the past month, the #TON token seized the opportunity to rise into the top 10 assets by market capitalisation, (based on circulating supply.)
In this week's "Chart of the Week," we explore the challenges that SOL's price has encountered over the past few months, which have largely stemmed from repercussions related to FTX. Currently, FTX controls a significant portion of the $SOL supply, a circumstance that could potentially induce substantial selling pressure if it decides to liquidate its holdings.
From August 1st to September 11th, SOL experienced notable losses against major cryptocurrencies, with declines of 13.2% against BTC, 10.7% against ETH, 12.6% against BNB, and 25.0% against TRX. Despite these concerns, it is important to note that a substantial portion of the SOL held by FTX will remain locked until it fully vests in 2028.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we look into how, despite the falling participation and interest, crypto investment products have maintained strong assets under management (AUMs) this year, with total aggregated AUM exceeding $35bn in August.
Although the SEC remains at large with their interpretations based on the age-old Howey Test, we have witnessed other jurisdictions such as the EU, UAE, and the UK introduce clear and positive legislation: MiCA, VARA, and FMSA respectively, which has positively impacted institutional flows into products.
In this week's 'Chart of the Week', we examine the surge in spot trading activity on Huobi during August. As of August 27th, the exchange recorded $25.8bn in trading volumes, making it the second-largest centralised exchange by monthly spot trading volume.
The exchange also saw its spot market share increase to 6.33%, its highest since October 2021. The uptick in trading activity coincides with recent concerns surrounding USDT flows on the exchange.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we explore AI tokens' resilience, yielding an impressive 18.4% increase despite recent market turbulence.
AKT leads the basket with an exceptional 248% return, followed closely by FET at 94.2%. Even without major market catalysts, like the SEC's ETF approval delays, investor focus appears to shift to real-world applications. AI's consistent outperformance throughout the year underscores this trend.
This week's Chart of the Week looks at the month-to-date (MTD) performance for a collection of major assets.
In August, the Dollar Index (DXY) and Bitcoin (BTC) emerged as the best performers, posting positive returns in a month which has been marked by significant declines across traditional asset classes.
Historically, $BTC has had an inverse correlation to the Dollar Index, whilst usually maintaining a positive correlation with traditional equities, especially tech stocks. However, this month has proved to be different - with BTC maintaining steady ground while other risky assets sell off.
Compared to other assets, BTC has shown signs of strength, most likely due to the positive sentiment surrounding the recent flurry of BTC Spot ETFs and the advancements made in the case against the SEC seen in the recent XRP ruling.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine the volatility of Bitcoin, which reached an all-time low of 36.3 on August 6th, according to the Bitcoin Volataility Index (BVIN). The BVIN measures the implied volatility of Bitcoin and is calculated by CCData using options data from Deribit.
Volatility has reached record lows following weeks of Bitcoin trading in a narrow range and historically low trading volumes on centralised exchanges. Typically, low volatility in the markets is followed by large market movements, the direction of which is unpredictable.
On Sunday, Curve DAO's token price experienced a sharp decline of ~17.0% as a result of a bug exploit related to the programming language, Vyper. This caused vulnerabilities in certain liquidity pools within the platform and resulted in over $20m in losses. The news of this exploit spread rapidly, prompting some exchanges, including Upbit, to temporarily halt trading of the token to assess the situation. As a consequence of the incident, the trading volume for the token skyrocketed,
reaching ~60% market share on the hourly trading volume chart, surpassing the trading volume of most other tokens on major decentralised exchanges. Furthermore, the open interest for the token surged dramatically, with many traders opting to short the token in response to the ongoing uncertainty and concerns about its vulnerability. This heightened shorting activity contributed to the token's funding rate recording an unprecedented -0.04% value, indicating the prevailing bearish sentiment among traders.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine Dogecoin's price action following Twitter's rebrand to 'X'. Dogecoin's price jumped 10% to a daily high of 0.0778 following Twitter's rebrand to X, outperforming the majority of the other crypto assets.
Meanwhile, the aggregate open interest for the token on centralised exchanges surged by 24% to $502mn after Elon Musk appeared to have added $DOGE symbol on his Twitter profile, with traders speculating on a possible integration of the token with the revamped platform.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine the aggregate open interest and average funding rate of Binance Coin (BNB). The average funding rate of BNB has dipped to a negative -0.0802%, marking its lowest level since May 2nd. This factor, coupled with an increase in open interest, suggests high levels of short positioning on BNB perpetual futures.
Since November 2022, there has been a noticeable trend between average funding rate and Binance Launchpad token launches - which require investors to lock BNB to gain access to coins launching on the platform. Investors seeking to maintain delta neutrality can hedge themselves via the perpetual contracts. In this instance, they accept funding rate costs to mitigate against market risk.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we highlight the large discount between fiat pairs trading on Binance.US vs the wider market. BTC/USD is trading at a 9.5% discount to CCCAGG's BTC reference price, whilst both USDT and USDC are trading at an 8.88% discount to their peg. The convergence of these discounts suggests the fair value discount to redeem fiat against crypto on Binance.US is around 9%.
Following the SEC's recent action against Binance.US, the exchange was forced to close down its fiat operations, with fiat deposits suspended in June. Only entities with liquid fiat available on Binance.US can take advantage of the low prices.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine the minimal impact on the markets despite the SEC's recent criticisms about the insufficiency of recent ETF filings. Following the news, Bitcoin's price underwent a moderate decline, falling from a peak of $31,116 to a trough of $29,613 within an hour. Additionally, open interest in Bitcoin futures contracts dropped from $10.4 billion to $9.3 billion, a decrease of 11.9%.
Market participants continue to maintain a positive outlook on the prospects of BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF, especially with Fidelity also showing interest and filing for its own Bitcoin ETF. This optimistic sentiment has effectively cushioned the market against potential negative impacts.
This week’s Chart of the Week highlights the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) repricing event amidst its listing on EDX Markets. EDX Markets, a non-custodial exchange, launched trading on the 20th of June, with backing from Charles Schwab, Fidelity Digital Assets and Citadel Securities. The platform has garnered significant interest from institutional players in the space, as well as being looked upon favourably by the regulators. As such, the four assets being listed on the exchange, BTC, ETH, LTC, and BCH, are now more accessible for institutional investors, which has led to positive price action and speculation.
BCH was the standout performer of the group, seeing its price double within the space of a week. This is likely due to its market cap being significantly lower than its peers, as well as its poor YTD performance, which needed a strong catalyst. It is worth monitoring any changes to the assets listed on EDX, as they can act as a proxy for assets which are seen to be safe in the eyes of the U.S. regulators.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine the changes in 1% market depth for BTC trading pairs on selected exchanges following the SEC lawsuit on Binance US. Since the lawsuit on June 5th, the 1% market depth of BTC pairs on Binance US has dropped by 78%. Similar effects can be observed on most other US exchanges, with Gemini and Kraken experiencing a decline in liquidity of 16% and 10%, respectively.
Coinbase stands out with a 27% increase in market depth since the lawsuit, suggesting that US-based traders and market makers may have sought refuge in the largest US exchange, considering it a safe haven. Binance and OKX have also witnessed a more modest rise in liquidity for BTC pairs, with market depth increasing by 2% and 12% respectively since June 5th, indicating heightened trading activity on exchanges outside the US.
In this week's Charts of the Week, we observe a significant impact on market liquidity following the SEC’s lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase. BinanceUS and Binance experienced substantial drops in liquidity for the BTC-USD pair, as shown in the 1% Market Depth. Both pairs experienced their lowest levels for the year, with decreases reaching as much as 85.0% and 65.6% respectively compared to January 1st. In contrast, Coinbase's 1% market depth demonstrated resilience, with a mere average decline of 5.18% as of June 10th.
As another ripple effect of the lawsuit announcement, assets identified as securities by the SEC took a severe hit. These recorded an average return of 20.4% on June 10th, a sharp contrast to Bitcoin's relatively minor drop of 5.03%.
In this week's chart of the week, we highlight the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust’s (GBTC) discount compared to net asset value (NAV), which is now at -43.10%. Despite improving this year, the discount fluctuates based on speculation related to their ongoing legal battle with the SEC.
Grayscale continues to contest the SEC's rejection of its bid to convert GBTC into a spot ETF. If successful, the NAV discount could be eliminated due to ETF's arbitrage mechanisms.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we examine Binance's recent banking issues in Australia, which have led to a sharp drop in the BTC-AUD pair's price and volume on the exchange.
Deposits via bank transfer were halted on May 18th, and withdrawals were allowed only until June 1st. This pushed the discount of the BTC-AUD pair down by 9000 AUD (a 22% discount) on May 28th.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we delve into the notable shift in the digital asset market landscape. Binance saw its market share decrease by 10.8% (as of May 20th) following the removal of zero-fee trading for USDT.
In this reshuffled field, Bullish, OKX, BitMEX, and Bybit have emerged as the biggest beneficiaries. They've gained 1.55%, 1.44%, 1.25%, and 1.04% in market share, respectively.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we take a closer look at the BTC-USD market behaviour from the past week. On BinanceUS, the BTC-USD pair exhibited a premium of $388.17, representing a 1.36% discrepancy when compared with CCData's Aggregate Price (CCAGG).
The marginal rise in premiums is likely driven by declining liquidity tied to the prevailing market sentiment and ongoing banking issues encountered by BinanceUS.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine the market depth of various BTC trading pairs on Binance. CCData’s spot Order Book data reveals that since Binance announced zero-fee trading for TUSD pairs on March 22nd, the 1% market depth for BUSD and USDT has decreased by 54.0% and 48.5%, respectively, as of April 30th.
Concurrently, the 1% market depth of the BTC-TUSD pair on Binance has experienced a 285% increase, solidifying its position as the second-largest pair on the exchange in April.
This week's Chart of the Week illustrates the influence large-scale sell-offs have on Bitcoin's price and volatility. Since the final week of April, considerable liquidations have been in motion, pushing Bitcoin downward from the $30,000 zone to ~$27,000.
For instance, on May 1st at 2:38 am, a transaction of 222 BTC was executed on Binance for the BTC-USDT pair. Following this transaction, the BTC price receded from $29,200 to $29,100.
This week's Chart of the Week delves into the exciting news of Coinbase and Gemini's upcoming launch of their derivatives platform and Deribit's recent addition of spot trading.
With this in mind, we examine the market share of exchanges that provide both spot and derivatives trading.
Despite the competition, Binance has the largest market share 38.7% (spot) and 64.3%(derivatives) respectively.
However, other exchanges have experienced varying levels of success in each category. For example, Bybit, the second-largest derivatives exchange with a 14.5% market share, holds only 0.92% of the spot market share.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we delve into the latest findings from our Exchange Benchmark, the industry standard for assessing the risk associated with digital asset exchanges. The report highlights how an increasing number of exchanges are enhancing their security measures via the implementation of security certificates and custodian services.
According to our research, the percentage of exchanges holding ISO 27001, SOC2 certificates, or similar credentials has risen from 24% in October 2022 to 30% in April 2023. In addition, the adoption of custody providers has increased from 26% in October 2022 to 34% currently.
The Shapella Upgrade, which allows for staked withdrawals, goes live today! The upgrade will allow for the withdrawal of locked staked funds and will complete the network’s transition to a proof-of-stake system.
It is expected to have a positive impact on the underlying asset, represented by lower negative funding rates and increasing open interest. Over the past few months, Ethereum open interest has experienced consistent growth.
This week's Chart of the Week highlights market cap dominance, which has surged from 38.3% at the start of the year to a new high of 45.2%, surpassing the levels seen in April 2021. Bitcoin has a track record of leading market recoveries during downtrends, a pattern that could potentially repeat itself.
This week's "Chart of the Week" showcases the growth achieved by March. Following a surge in price, the leading surpassed other leading coins, recording a staggering 20.9% return (as of March 26th) and marking its highest market dominance for the year. BTC's market capitalisation also broke the $500bn milestone, reaching a figure not seen since June 2022.
This week’s Chart of the Week highlights May’s correlation of daily returns between BTC, ETH and the SP500, falling to 15.8% and 18.2%, respectively, the lowest level since August 2022. Digital assets have benefitted from a significant price appreciation following signs that tight monetary policy and high interest rates may soon reach their peak. This comes after the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, causing a stir in the banking system, and amplifying the interest in digital assets.
The depegging of USDC and regulatory issues with BUSD has led to Binance converting $1 billion of their Industry Recovery Initiative funds to BTC, ETH, and BNB, triggering further buy pressure for digital assets.
In this week's ChartoftheWeek, we examine the depegging of numerous stablecoins following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The depeg began after concerns surrounding the reserves of USDC were raised following the collapse of SVB. As a result, USDC de-pegged to below $0.90.
However, USDC and other stablecoins regained their parity following FDIC's intervention, which expanded deposit guarantees to all depositors. Other fiat-redeemable stablecoins including USDT, BUSD and TUSD largely remained pegged to their parity during the turmoil.
This week's Chart of the Week highlights how Bitcoin (BTC) has been outperforming both ETH and MVDA 100 (a market cap-weighted index tracking the performance of the 100 largest digital assets) in terms of returns so far in 2023.
As of March 2nd, BTC recorded an impressive 42.0% of returns, compared to 37.9% and 33.5% for ETH and MVDA, respectively. Additionally, Bitcoin's dominance has spiked to 41.7%, indicating that traders and investors may still have concerns about the overall market and the possibility of further declines.
This week's Charts of the Week shows a significant drop in Average Transaction Size (ATS) on Binance for major assets like BTC and ETH, falling from $1,690 and $1,768 in March 2022 to $865 and $1,021 in February 2023. This suggests lower market participant conviction, as they enter with smaller sizes compared to a year ago.
ATS can also reveal increased conviction and interest in other assets benefiting from specific narratives. Lido's LDO and Stack's STX tokens are examples of this. For example, LDO's ATS on Binance has risen from $141 in June 2022 to $385 in February 2023, whereas STX's ATS also increased to $240 in February, up 27.7% from the previous month.
In our Chart of the Week this week, we examine the decline in BUSD Market Share on Binance. After the initial surge in BUSD trading volumes on Binance - following the SEC's regulatory intervention, the market share of BUSD stablecoins has trended downward from 43.3% to 25.7% on February 13th.
This is the lowest daily market share for BUSD since the 25th of August 2022, days before the exchange implemented BUSD auto conversion, which saw customers' USDC, TUSD, AND USDP automatically converted to BUSD.
This week's Chart of the Week showcases the thriving liquid staking derivative (LSD) token market, with four major players making waves - Frax's FXS, Lido's LDO, Rocket Pool's RPL, and Ankr's ANKR.
These tokens have seen impressive growth, soaring by 286%, 239%, 208%, and 103%, respectively. Lido continues to dominate the market with a market share of 64.7% in January and 56.1% in February, while RPL experienced a decline.
This week, we feature two Charts of the Week showcasing BTC, ETH and stablecoins’ aggregate market cap dominance dropping 2.7% to 69.8% of the total crypto market cap. This is the biggest month-on-month fall since August 2021, when the market was recovering between BTC’s $64,000 peak in April and $69,000 peak in November.
The decline relates to a fall in stablecoin market share - down from 16.6% at the start of the year to 12.3% at the end of January. The decline in aggregate dominance in these assets, which are the least volatile assets in the crypto landscape, highlights the increased performance of small, volatile assets and market participants' change in sentiment during the first month of the year.
This week's Chart of the Week showcases the upward trend of Bitcoin, which is currently on track to record its highest monthly return in January since 2013.
As of January 29th, the cryptocurrency has experienced a 43.7% increase from December, marking its highest monthly return since December 2020.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we used our granular derivatives data to examine digital asset open interest and funding rate metrics to track market movements and measure the flow of money into the crypto futures market.
Bitcoin dominated Open Interest, recording an increase of 5.09% from the 1st of January till the 18th, followed by Ethereum, which recorded an increase of 14.29%. Ripple’s XRP and Cardano’s ADA also saw a significant increase in Open Interest — with a 51.6% and 69.4% rise, respectively.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine Bitcoin's overall yearly performance. Bitcoin ended 2022 at $16,531, recording the third ever negative yearly performance in its 14-year history.
The 64.2% fall in price, however, is not its largest decline in history. 2018 saw a 73% decline followed by a 92% increase the following year.
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