Happy New Year!
In this digest, we cover the crypto world in the past two weeks of Christmas holidays.
Market indices and prices:
- Fear and greed index is 25 today, which indicates Extreme Fear. The average for the past week was 26.4.
- Crypto Volatility Index (CVI) opened today at 50.9. The CVI continued to decline from its peak of 125 in the aftermath of FTX collapse. The current level is substantially below the average for 2022 (78.1) and below the lowest 2022 CVI 0f 57.6.
- Total market capitalization is $851.5 billion at press time. Total market cap increased steadily throughout the week from $798.0 on January 1.
- The bitcoin dominance is currently 39.60%, a decrease of 0.45% from 40.05% on January 1.
BTC price as of today (11:00am UTC) was $17,248, which is 2.0% higher than the 7-day VWMA (volume weighted moving average) of $16,926. BTC price increased by 4.4% from its lowest level of $16,521 on January 1. On January 3, MACD indicated a bullish trend as BTC crossed the signal line at $16,957.
ETH price as of today (11:00am UTC) was $1,321.8 which is 4.8% higher than the 7-day VWMA (volume weighted moving average) of $1,267.8. The ETH price followed the BTC upward trend, increasing by 10.4% from January 1 price of $1,196.7.
The best performing altcoins in the past 7 days were:
- LDO (Lido DAO) price increased by 52.1% in the past 7 days. LDO is a native utility token of decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) LIDO, which offers a liquid staking service for Ethereum 2.0 and other proof of stake (POS) blockchains such as Solana (SOL), Polygon (MATIC), Polkadot (DOT), and Kusama (KSM). LDO was in the bear market territory in November and December 2022 and the price rally kicked off on January 1.
- SOL (Solana) gained 35.4%. Solana is one of the largest altcoins by market cap. It is also the base currency for the Solana blockchain, which is known for low commissions and high transaction speed. The SOL price dropped by 94% in 2022 and was valued at $9.98 on the last day of 2022. The SOL price increase was supported by the airdrop of the BONK meme coin, major NFT launches, not to mention supportive tweets from Vitalik Buterin.
- BitDAO (BitDAO) price went up by 29.2%. BitDAO had been added to the HitBTC exchange at the end of December, right before the price rally! BitDAO is a collective of builders, products, and mutually beneficial ecosystems governed by BitDAO token holders. BitDAO current initiatives include Game7 (a gaming ecosystem), Mantle (a high performance Ethereum layer-2 blockchain), EduDAO (Web3 educational project).
The top 3 losers in the past week were HT and TRX, as well as TONCOIN.
- HT and TRX prices declined by 8.4% and 3.9% respectively. The decline was triggered by the Huobi’s exchange announcement that it would cut its headcount by 20% in the upcoming days. HT is the native token of Huobi, and TRX is the base currency of the TRON blockchain founded by Justin Sun, Huobi advisor, who generally represents the exchange publicly. Huobi also experienced a significant increase in outflows amid rumors of its potential insolvency issues.
- TONCOIN has been in the top-3 list of the best performing altcoins in December of the last year. In the past 7 days, the price has declined by 5% which represents a minor correction compared to the 20% price surge in December 2022.
What else happened:
- FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to all eight counts of U.S. criminal charges. The trial is scheduled for October 2023.
- Hong Kong, which has long been one of the top places for web3 development, wants to secure its dominant position by issuing digital HK Dollar, labeled e-HKD. Hong Kong lawmakers are seeking approval from Beijing.
- Crypto exchange Huobi experienced substantial increase in outflows after it announced a 20% headcount reduction. Investors started pulling their funds from the exchange amid insolvency concerns. According to Nansen, a crypto intelligence firm, 81% of Huobi reserves are held in the HT utility token, which lost 8.4% in value in the past 7 days. Huobi troubles affected the price of TRX and USDD that run on the Tron blockchain since Justin Sun, Tron founder, is an advisor and major backer of the Huobi exchange.
- US regulators and legal authorities continue their assault on the crypto industry. Coinbase, a public cryptocurrency exchange, received a $50 million fine from the New York State for “significant” compliance failures, and Empire State’s Attorney General sued former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky for allegedly defrauding the CeFi exchange’s clients. And finally, the US Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC) is trying to block Binance acquisition of bankrupt crypto lender, Voyager Digital.
Swap feature is now live on HitBTC !
We have added a new Swap feature, which allows you to exchange tokens and coins immediately at market prices without trading them on the exchange. Swap is available for assets in your wallet account and takes no longer than 2-3 minutes. The swap feature is easy to use since you do not need to transfer funds to a spot account and submit buy or sell orders. It can also be very helpful if the spot exchange does not have enough liquidity to fulfill your order.
New listings on HitBTC:
- BitDAO (BitDAO) is a governance token by the BitDAO organization built on the ERC-20 standard. BitDAO aims to build core products that will help the functionality and effectiveness of BitDAO and other DAOs. The core product includes a set of on-chain and off-chain governance solutions and products, with the DAO’s treasury management able to deploy and monitor assets to earn yield.
- Town Start (TOWN) is a token that was created by Gala Games exclusively as a reward for playing Town Star, a competitive farming game. Players top the leaderboard with the chance to win big prizes, and complete challenges to collect Town Points. The goal of the game is to grow, gather and craft your way to building the most efficient and productive town imaginable. Uses of TOWN include in-game purchases, upgrades and benefits and, of course, trading, since TOWN has already been listed on several major exchanges.
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.
- 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.
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
