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Weekly recap: Chinese crypto sales hold BTC’s rate
Experts indicate an increase in demand for stablecoins, unprecedented sales of BTC due to a cryptocurrency ban are observed on exchanges in China, the Central Bank of Russia intends to forbid crypto investments, while the first NFT has been released on the Dogecoin blockchain. Read the Weekly recap to find out more about the main events of the crypto market that happened between 15th and 22nd December 2021.
Crypto market in numbers
The cryptocurrency market cap increased by 4.4% over the past week thanks to the recovery of bitcoin and altcoins observed since 20th December. The indicator is trying to gain a foothold at a level of $2.3 trillion. The median value for the week was $2.2 trillion.
Trading activity continues to decline just before the Christmas holidays. Average daily trading volumes for the week were $89 billion – a 6.7% decrease from the previous week, according to CoinMarketCap.
On 22nd December, the crypto Fear and Greed Index rose to 45 points, up 18 points compared with the previous day. The market is very close to leaving the “Fear” zone, where it has remained since 27th November. Prior to that, the index stood below 30 points for the entire week.
Over the week, bitcoin’s dominance fell by 1.1% to 40.4%. The dominance of ether stood above 21%, but by 22nd December, it pulled back to 20.8%.
The trend for ether’s transition to the deflationary model has not been observed for a month now. 22nd November was the last time when the amount of ETH burned exceeded the amount of ETH issued. The burning rate has also slowed down significantly.
Bitcoin’s 30-day volatility index dropped by 0.19% over the past 7 days to 3.57%, according to CryptoCompare. In general, the indicator remains moderate, indicating a lower level of fluctuation than during the first half of the year. Bitcoin’s supply on exchanges decreased by 0.87% over the past days, according to CryptoQuant. At the same time, ether’s supply rose by 0.7%.
Gainers of the week (16th – 22nd December 2021)
| Coin | Opening price 16.12, $ | Opening price 22.12, $ | Change |
| YFI | 25,372.69 | 34,393.48 | 35.6% |
| EXM | 0.05 | 0.06 | 20.1% |
| XRP | 0.83 | 0.95 | 14.3% |
| ONE | 0.20 | 0.22 | 10.0% |
| QTUM | 9.00 | 9.26 | 2.9% |
Losers of the week (16th – 22nd December 2021)
| Coin | Opening price 16.12, $ | Opening price 22.12, $ | Change |
| ROOBEE | 0.0054 | 0.0044 | -18.6% |
| TONCOIN | 2.69 | 2.38 | -11.3% |
| VLX | 0.23 | 0.21 | -10.7% |
| TRX | 0.09 | 0.08 | -10.1% |
| UNI | 18.27 | 16.83 | -7.9% |
Easily track gainers and losers within the Simple trade section on EXMO. Check real-time updates in the last 24 hours, week and month.
Most traded coins (15th – 21st December 2021)
| Coin | Trading volumes, $ |
| BTC | 38,486,791 |
| ETH | 33,752,639 |
| XRP | 6,326,169 |
| IQN | 2,895,950 |
| LTC | 1,722,812 |
| ROOBEE | 1,357,685 |
| GMT | 1,240,381 |
| WAVES | 1,038,489 |
| CRON | 924,036 |
| DASH | 914,902 |
Top crypto market driving factors
Overall crypto market
▲ 15.12.2021 – The Federal Reserve announced that it is leaving the federal funds rate at a range between 0 and 0.25% following its meeting on 14th and 15th December. The Fed is also set to double the pace of tapering, winding down bond purchases by March, instead of June.
▼ 16.12.2021 – Reuters: Bank of Russia to seek ban on investment in cryptocurrencies.
▲ 17.12.2021 – The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) has allowed the members of federally insured credit unions to partner with third parties to support the buying, selling and holding of cryptocurrencies.
▲ 17.12.2021 – Santiment: the ratio of USDT stablecoins on exchanges has risen to 22.5%, which is the highest level in over 6 months.The increased amount of supply indicates a rising level of buying power accumulating on exchanges.
▼ 20.12.2021 – CoinShares: digital asset investment products saw outflows totalling $142 million, the largest weekly outflows on record and the first outflow following a 17 week run of inflows. The largest inflows were into bitcoin (62.8%) and ether (44.8%).
▼ 21.12.2021 – Delphi Digital: USDT supply on exchanges is at a 1-year high, suggesting traders are turning risk-off or locking in end-of-year profits.
▲ 22.12.2021 – El Salvador bought another 21 bitcoins to mark the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century.
Bitcoin (BTC)
▲ 16.12.2021 – Glassnode: the Canadian Bitcoin Purpose ETF has added 6,341 BTC (26,2%) in assets under management after bitcoin reached an all-time high of $69,000.
▼ 17.12.2021 – Glassnode: an unprecedented amount of selling from Asia has become the driving force behind the current BTC downturn. During US and EU working hours, bitcoin’s price tends to grow.
▲ 17.12.2021 – Elektra Group, a leading financial services provider, owned by Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas, started accepting bitcoin as a payment option.
▼ 19.12.2021 – Santiment: trading sentiment towards bitcoin has fallen to its most negative levels in 11 weeks, which could be a sign of trend reversal.
▲ 20.12.2021 – Glassnode: bitcoin miner unspent supply is currently sitting at just 500 BTC (around 0,03%) below the ATH of 1.78 million BTC, reached in December 2020.
▼ 20.12.2021 – CoinShares: bitcoin saw outflows totalling $89 million, well below the outflows seen in June when they were as much as $150m. Over the week, bitcoin’s AUM fell by 15%.
Ethereum (ETH)
▼ 16.12.2021 – Santiment: over the past few days, large spikes in ETH supply on exchanges have been observed, suggesting that a substantial amount of sell pressure is looming.
▲ 16.12.2021 – ConsenSys partners with Mastercard to launch a new Ethereum scaling system called “Consensys Rollups”.
▲ 17.12.2021 – The Optimistic team has removed the whitelist, making the Layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution open to all developers.
▲ 20.12.2021 – The former President of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, had a meeting with Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum (the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap). They discussed the role that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology play for governments. Macri called Ethereum one of the most innovative decentralised technologies of the century.
▼ 20.12.2021 – CoinShares: over the past week, ether saw record outflows totalling $64 million, with its AUM decreasing by 11%.
▲ 21.12.2021 – Ethereum developers launched the Kintsugi testnet to test the implications of blockchain mergers on Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithms.
Cardano (ADA)
▲ 20.12.2021 – CoinShares: Cardano saw inflows of $0.5 million amid a strong general outflow trend over the past week.
XRP (XRP)
▲ 20.12.2021 – CoinShares: XRP recorded inflows of $0.3 million amid a strong general outflow trend over the past week.
Polkadot (DOT)
▲ 15.12.2021 – Acala, the project that has won the first parachain slot auction on Polkadot, is to initiate its launch process on Polkadot on 18th December.
▲ 16.12.2021 – Clover Network has won the 5th parachain auction on Polkadot.
▲ 18.12.2021 – Polkadot developers have announced the official launch of the first batch of parachains. The first five bidding parachains include Acala, Astar, Clover, Moonbeam and Parallel Finance.
▲ 20.12.2021 – CoinShares: Polkadot saw inflows totalling $2.5 million amid a strong general outflow trend over the past week.
▲ 20.12.2021 – Polkadot has finally released its very first parachain called Shell.
▲ 21.12.2021 – Deutsche Telekom’s T-Sуstems Multimedia Solutions (MMS) purchased a significant amount of DOT tokens.
Dogecoin (DOGE)
▲ 15.12.2021 – DOGE developer has launched the first-ever non-fungible token (NFT) on the Dogecoin blockchain.
▲▼ 16.12.2021 – WhaleStats: on 15th December, the Dogecoin network recorded a huge transfer of 5.3 billion meme tokens, worth $844 million, shortly before Elon Musk announced that Tesla would accept Dogecoin as payment for some merchandise.
Shiba Inu (SHIB)
▲ 17.12.2021 – Steven Cooper, owner of the first crypto record label, Bigger Entertainment, whose team is responsible for SHIB burning, announced that the burn rate should double over the next 60 days.
▲ 19.12.2021 – Shiba Inu developers are reportedly preparing to launch a layer 2 scaling solution called Shibarium.
▼ 21.12.2021 – Canadian online medical service provider, Ask The Doctor, has sold all 31 billion SHIB (around $1 million) it acquired previously. The company suspected that the creator of Squid Game crypto scam may be the main ideologist and developer of the SHIB token. At Ask The Doctor, they plan to initiate a lawsuit filing against the SHIB team and its community lead.
▲ 21.12.2021 – WhaleStats: An ETH whale added 4 trillion SHIB ($136 million) in the past 24 hours.
Uniswap (UNI)
▲ 16.12.2021 – The Uniswap developers have released a series of upgrades that improve pricing and make trading on the Uniswap DEX more efficient.
▲ 18.12.2021 – Uniswap community votes to deploy the third version of Uniswap DEX on the Polygon network within a few days.
Tron (TRX)
▼ 17.12.2021 – The founder of Tron, Justin Sun, announced that he left Tron to become Grenada’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
Stellar (XLM)
▼ 15.12.2021 – The National Bank of Ukraine stated that the pilot project of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Stellar is not directly related to the issue of e-hryvnia.
Cosmos (ATOM)
▲ 15.12.2021 – The Cosmos network has launched the Gravity Bridge to interact with Ethereum.
Tezos (XTZ)
▲ 15.12.2021 – The Rarible NFT platform has successfully integrated with the Tezos blockchain and added Ubisoft NFT support.
▼ 15.12.2021 – Sellers have pumped Ubisoft’s NFT costs to 100,000 XTZ (around $450,000). The Tezos team has published an article on their blog called “38k Dislikes: What’s Wrong with Ubisoft Quartz”.
▼ 17.12.2021 – The head of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, said that the company does not intend to abandon the introduction of NFT tokens into their games. However, he was unable to provide further information in relation to the kind of gameplay innovation NFTs or blockchain technology bring, reported Kotaku.
Waves (WAVES)
▲ 16.12.2021 – On 15th December 2021, Waves Enterprise held its third annual conference dedicated to blockchain technology.
yearn.finance (YFI)
▲ 16.12.2021 – Yearn Finance started buying back YFI on a massive scale, according to the company’s representatives.
PARSIQ (PRQ)
▲ 21.12.2021 – The PARSIQ team has announced a partnership with Babylon Finance, a platform for community-led asset management.
EXMO news
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That’s all for this week! Follow EXMO on YouTube, Twitter and Telegram to stay tuned to the main events and trends in the crypto market.