As the crypto world got caught up in the market rally, an important anniversary was missed by many market participants. Fourteen years ago, on January 12, 2009, a first bitcoin transaction happened, when Satoshi Nakamoto sent Hal Finney, a well-regarded cryptographer and computer scientist, 10 bitcoins (BTC).
It was impossible to imagine at that time how the industry would grow. Since then, there were at least 469 times when Bitcoin and the crypto industry were pronounced dead.
And while crypto is still very popular for illicit use, the volatility keeps running high, and many large players went bankrupt during the past year, twe are currently in a bull run, which has also been the largest for the past 9 months (and it does not seem to be over yet!).
Market indices and prices:
- Fear and greed index is at 45 today, a substantial increase from the average for the last month (25). On January 14, the index reached 52, the highest level since April 2022.
- Crypto Volatility Index (CVI) opened today at 75.18. As expected in the period of market rally, volatility has increased. CVI has increased from 50.92 on January 9, or 48% over the past 7 days.
- Total market capitalization was $982.7 billion at 0:00 UTC. The indicator crossed the $1.0 trillion mark briefly at 5:00 UTC, for the first time since November 8. It is at $981.3 billion at press time.
- The bitcoin dominance increased throughout the past week. It is 41.16% at press time, an increase of 1.68% from 39.48% at the start of the day on January 9.
BTC price as of today (12:00 pm UTC) was $20,839.0, which is in line with the 7-day VWMA (volume weighted moving average) of $20,976.9. BTC price has increased by approximately 21% in the past 7 days.
ETH price as of today (12:00 рm UTC) was $1,545.1, the 7-day VWMA (volume weighted moving average) of $1,550.6. ETH price increased by 17% in the past 7 days.
The best performing altcoins in the past 7 days were:
- MANA (Decentraland) has gained 75.0%. Mana is the ERC-20 standard token that powers the Decentraland platform. With MANA, users can purchase plots of land, as well as pay for in-game items and services. The price has jumped after Decentraland introduced new features for users on Thursday, January 12.
In the current bull run, gaming tokens are outperforming the broad cryptocurrency market. Other major gainers include SAND (33.5%), ENJ (22.8%), AXS (16.5%). Check out our article on top 7 gaming tokens here.
- APT (Aptos) price has increased by 55.5%. APT is the native currency of the Aptos blockchain, which is a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain with its own smart contract programming language. The APT has started rising ahead of the market on the news that Pancakeswap launched a DEX on Aptos.
- CVX (Convex Finance) price has gone up by 36.6%. CVX is a governance token of Convex Finance, a DeFi protocol that allows Curve liquidity providers to earn a share of trading fees on Curve without staking liquidity there. Instead, LPs can stake with Convex and receive boosted CRV and liquidity mining rewards.
It is hard to find losers in a market rally like the one we are experiencing now, but in the past week, the top 3 losers still managed to post negative returns: ZEC (-4.7%), GALA (-5.3%) and NEXO (-2.7%).
What else happened:
- Major crypto players continue to reduce headcount. Crypto.com and Blockchain.com were the latest to announce job cuts. It is estimated that 29,000 jobs have been lost in crypto space since April 2022.
- Optimism, which is about to launch on HitBTC this week, has been the fastest growing Layer 2 blockchain solution built on Ethereum. The number of daily transactions is up 700% in Q4 2022, making it the top Layer 2 blockchain by transaction volume. It is the second largest Layer 2 by total value locked (TVL), representing $1.3B or nearly 29% of the sector’s TVL. Optimism governance token, OP, has grown by 38% in the past 7 days.
- On January 12, Bulgarian authorities raided offices of Nexo, a cryptocurrency investment platform. The operation targeted a large-scale money laundering scheme as well as violations of Russia’s international sanctions. Nexo governance token was one of the worst performers during the past week and was down by 1.34%.
- Despite market downturn, illicit use of cryptocurrencies hit a record high $20.1 billion in 2022 according to the Chainalysis press release.
- On the regulatory news, the US is leading the way with the SEC charging Gemini and Genesis with selling unregistered securities as part of the Gemini’s Earn product. BlockFi, which filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, settled similar charges with the SEC by paying a $100 million fine. In the meantime, the US House finally announced the subcommittee on digital assets, financial technology and inclusion.
What is new on HitBTC:
- Try out our new Swap feature, which allows you to exchange tokens and coins immediately at market prices without trading them on the exchange. The feature allows instant exchange of any token and coin, while spot trading pairs only exchange with quoted currencies.
- On January 11th, we burned a new batch of 26,227,589 Hit tokens valued at $3.1 million. We determined the amount of burn based on HitBTC’s December trading fees, HIT token price and market conditions. Transaction link
- We are supporting KRRX swap. For KRRX token holders on HitBTC, swap will happen this week automatically.
New listings on HitBTC:
- GMX (GMX) is a governance token of GMX, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange that supports low swap fees and zero price impact trades.
- VEMP (vEmpire DDAO) is the ERC-20 governance token of vEmpire DDAO, a Metaverse investment organization. vEmpire DDAO is the first protocol to enable Metaverse token staking in exchange for dual yield interest, paying yields in both $VEMP and the original token staked.
Coming soon to HitBTC:
- OP (Optimism) is a base currency of the Optimism layer-2 blockchain built on top of the Ethereum ecosystem. Optimism is one of the biggest scaling solutions for Ethereum with over $300 million in TVL (Total Value Locked). It is home to 35 protocols, with the largest being Synthetix (SNX), a derivatives exchange, Uniswap (UNI), a DEX, and Velodrome (VELO), an AMM. Optimism has been one of the top performers in the past week with a gain of 22.3%.
- XRD (Radix) is the native cryptocurrency of Radix, which is a layer 1 smart contract platform. The platform’s smart contracts operate on the Scrypto programming language developed by the in-house team. To attract DeFi dApp developers, Radix rewards them with royalty fees each time their code is used in the transaction. The creators also claim that the underlying blockchain has unlimited scalability.
- Cult (CultDAO) is a governance token of CultDAO, a decentralized investment platform. The CultDAO aims to invest in developing decentralized technologies and its treasury is funded by the CultDAO transaction fees, which is 0.4% from each transaction.
If you have not done so yet, please do not forget to download our trading app on Android and iOS. And remember: bear market is the best time to start building your crypto portfolio! (And our latest article may help you with that!)
Cheers,
HitBTC team
