In this digest we present the past 7 days in review, as well as the current state of market and the most recent platform news.
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Market indices and prices:
Fear and greed index is currently in the “greed” zone. It is 61 today, which is the highest level since the end of 2021.
Crypto Volatility Index (CVI) continued to decline and currently stands at 61.05 compared to 67.56 last Monday. The index was 56.52 on the first day of the year, but increased by approximately 20 points as the bull run kicked off the first week of January. It has been consistently declining for the past two weeks.
Total market capitalization is $1,048 at press time (12:00 am UTC), which is in line with the cap value as of $1,044 at the start of the previous week.
The bitcoin dominance is 42.52% at press time (12:00 am UTC), an increase of 0.6% from 41.92% at the start of the day on January 23.
BTC price as of today (12:00 am UTC) is $23,125.1, which is higher than the 7-day VWMA (volume weighted moving average) of $23,245.8. The BTC price reached its peak of 23,918.2 yesterday and has been declining since then. Last week, it was trading at the highest price levels since August 2022.
ETH price has been largely following the BTC path. ETH price as of today (12:00 am UTC) is $1,584.0, while the 7-day VWMA is $1,598.9. ETH underperformed BTC year-to-date in 2023. While BTC gained approximately 43%, ETH price gains amounted only to 36%.
The best performing altcoins in the past 7 days were:
T ( Threshold) price has increased by 77%. Threshold price rally ensued after Coinbase announced its intent to list the token.Threshold is both a utility token for the Threshold Network and a governance token for the Threshold DAO. The Threshold network provides and maintains a suite of cryptographic primitives for several dApps. The T token is primarily used to stake a node. Node operators receive fees from various applications that rely on the Threshold network’s cryptographic primitives. The T token is also a governance token, and users can lock the token in coverage pools to earn yield in exchange for underwriting collateral risk in the network.
APT ( Aptos) continues to be a top performer. The APT price has increased by 37.5% in the past 7 days and more than 400% since the start of the year. Many traders believe that the APT rally is short-lived, but the price continues to accelerate. 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.
DYDX ( dYdX) price has surged 30.81% in the past 7 days. The increase is attributable to the Dydx decision to postpone the scheduled unlock of 130 million tokens worth around $300M from early February to December 2023. The token surged as much as 21% within one day following the publication of the report. DYDX (dYdX) is the ERC-20 governance token for the layer 2 protocol of the dYdX non-custodial decentralized cryptocurrency exchange built on Ethereum. It serves to facilitate the operation of layer 2 and allows traders, liquidity providers and partners to contribute to the definition of the protocol's future as a community.
Top 3 losers of the last week included: FLOW (-15.0%), LDO (-11.4%) and SNX (-9.2%).
What else happened:
Solana is making a big and expensive bet by launching its own hardware phone. The ambitious project to build the first web3-friendly phone was announced in June 2022. Last week, Solana hit an important milestone in the project's development by unveiling its own app store.
Nigeria has been consistently ranked as number one country in Africa in terms of crypto adoption. Nigerians find refuge in crypto amid ongoing financial troubles like inflation, lack of access to traditional banking, and restrictions on cash usage. BTC has been trading with a premium on Nigerian exchanges since early January as the Central Bank of Nigeria has continued to impose limits on ATM cash withdrawals as part of the ongoing effort to accelerate its shift to a cashless society. BTC is currently trading on Nigerian exchanges at $37,814.2, which reflects 64% premium to market price.
In the meantime, BTC is on track to have the best January performance since 2013. BTC year-to-date return is nearly 43%. Certain investors believe that the BTC price may surpass $50,000 if gold correlation persists.
ETH, however, underperformed BTC surging only 36% in the year-to-date period despite turning deflationary in January. Coindesk analysis points out three factors affecting the decline in ETH/BTC ratio.
Amazon becomes the latest big tech firm to enter the promising NFT space by announcing the launch of the NFT platform in spring. While the exact plans are uncertain, insiders are saying that it will be focused on blockchain based gaming and NFT collectables.
New assets available on HitBTC:
OP ( Optimism) is now available for trading in OP/USDT, OP/USDC, OP/BTC and OP/ETH pairs! OP is a base currency of the Optimism layer-2 blockchain built on top of the Ethereum ecosystem. Optimism is the second largest scaling solution 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 since the start of the year with the year-to-date return of 159.5%.
XRD ( Radix) launched on HitBTC last week in XRD/USDT and XRD/BTC trading pairs. XRD 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.
Coming soon to HitBTC:
We are currently working on the MFT - > HiFi swap, which we expect to complete this week. For details of the swap, refer to HiFi Tokenomics Lite Paper. As a result of the swap, we will have a new HiFi token that will replace existing MFT. MFT holders will get an equivalent of their MFT holdings in new HiFi tokens.
If you have not done so yet, please do not forget to download our trading app on Android and iOS.
Cheers,
HitBTC team
