The crypto ecosystem has set unprecedented new-highs, TokenInsight looks back over what happened in the last seven days in the market.
The crypto market has set unprecedented new-highs. According to data from CoinMarketCap, on Mar 12, 2021, the whole market cap of crypto assets have reached $1.73 trillion, which is equal to the SIX Swiss exchange’s market cap. Excluding Bitcoin’s market cap, altcoins’ market cap has reached $660.6 billion, which could be compared with mature stock exchanges like NZX.
This week, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and public chain tokens performed well. As digital artists, represented by Beeple, began to lead the art investment market, and the sports industry officially endorsed sports NFTs, NFTs — once considered “no-value” or "liar projects" — have become a rookie in the digital asset market.
Meanwhile, more public-chain tokens that adopt new technologies are leading the future value trend of the crypto asset’s field.
Mainstream Cryptos: ‘Temporarily Out of the Fluctual Interval’
It seems that this week entered into the middle and late stages of the market cycle since this year. After the February shock caused Bitcoin’s price to pull back to around US$45,000, Bitcoin returned to a high of $57,000 this Friday, but the transaction volume did not increase significantly, and furtherly declined compared to last week. Bitcoin spot trading volume this week was $71.81 billion, while perpetual contract trading volume was only $58.34 billion. Considering the last price-drop, a large number of institutions entered the market at a low level to receive Bitcoin, the current market seems to be "the supply less than the demand" again.
However, what is different from last week is that this week did not show strong short signals. There is no obvious change in trading volume in the futures market, while the trading volume in the options market is at a relatively low level this year. Due to two months of “roller coaster” volatility, this rebound has caused institutions to generally have "cautious optimism.” From the perspective of the skewness curve, the market’s skewness in the near and mid-term has only shown a slow rebound. In the long term, it continues to deviate toward the neutral direction.
Compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum has seen a similar move in mid-February. Although there is a decline in spot trading volume, the weekly trading volume of perpetual contracts rose abnormally by 4.26% to $146.9 billion. Meanwhile, from Mar. 9 to 11, Ethereum options on Deribit and Bit.com appeared with large-value option transactions of the same scale as in mid-February. They were all longing the call options. Ethereum may suffer volatility in the near future.
Project Tokens: NFTs Continue to Lead, Non-Ethereum Public Chains for Specialized Uses Perform Outstandingly
The NFT frenzy that began in February has not seemed to stop. The weekly best-performing token is CHZ, which is from Chiliz, an on-chain NFT issuance platform cooperating with many well-known sports events and clubs.
Spurred by positive news such as Chiliz’s official announcement of opening up in the US market and investing $50M in cooperation with five major US sports leagues to develop new fan tokens, as of 2:00 on Mar. 12, the market value of the project’s token has reached $2.7 billion, which is an increase of more than 300% within a week. Besides, the highest trading volume of CHZ reached 2.01 billion U.S. dollars this week.
Moreover, the game token development platform Enjin Coin (ENJ), which cooperates with Chiliz, was also pushed to rise. Its current market value is $1.781B, which is an increase of 75.66% compared with last week.
Not only NFTs, but like the public chain dedicated to sports services, Chiliz's success has undoubtedly stimulated investors' enthusiasm for investment in some specialized non-Ethereum projects and layer-2 projects. The market value of layer-2 projects such as SKALE Network and Polygon have more than doubled (market cap), while the streaming media service project Theta, the chain program project Near Protocol, the stable currency cross-border payment project Terra have all seen gains. The market value of projects Hedera Hashgraph and Zilliqa has generally increased by 55-75%.
From the perspective of market development in March, in Q2, investors will focus on three areas: NFTs, layer-2 and specific-purpose public chains. Nowadays, blockchain is not only used for payment and accounting, the development of a large number of new use-cases will bring a series of new projects "blowouts," and unicorn projects like Chiliz may be hidden in these new projects, waiting for the discovery of professional investors.
Highlights Picked by TokenInsight
Famous Digital Artist Beeple's NFT Works Sold for Nearly $70 Million
Digital artist Beeple has assembled his digital art works uploaded every day since 2007 into a new work, which has become a unique and wonderful masterpiece on NFT. The work was sold at auction for $69,346,250 on Mar. 11.
Private Bank NPB Launches Digital Asset Transaction CustodySservice
On March 9th, the Zurich-based private bank NPB, Neue Private Bank AG cooperated with InCore Bank AG to provide customers with digital asset transaction custody services.
JPMorgan Releases 34 Blockchain Jobs, Recruitment Information
JPMorgan has posted 34 open blockchain positions on its website. Most of these vacancies posted this month and last month are located in the United States, India and Singapore. A lot of work is directly related to Onyx.
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