Weekly recap: altcoins continue to challenge bitcoin

Crypto market in numbers

The crypto market capitalisation fell below $1.1 trillion on 19th August 2022. For most of the week, the indicator has stayed above the $1 trillion mark, according to CoinMarketCap.

Trading volumes amounted to $503 billion over the week, showing a slight 2% increase compared to the previous week. The average daily trading volume for this period was $72 billion. The highest trading activity was observed on 19th and 20th August 2022: $89 billion and $88 billion, respectively.

Market sentiment deteriorated throughout the week. The Cryptocurrency Fear & Greed Index dropped from 40 to 25 points, returning to the “Extreme Fear” zone. The median value of the indicator was 28 points for the week and 32 points for the month.

Bitcoin dominance hit its lowest level since January 2022 at 39.6%. The market share of ether dropped below 19%, but then rose to 19.9%. According to Blockchaincenter, the altcoin season index rose to 96 points on 24th August 2022. Currently, it stands at 94 points. This means that the 90-day ROI of 94% of the top 50 largest altcoins is higher than that of bitcoin.

Gainers of the week (19th – 25th August 2022)

Losers of the week (19th – 25th August 2022)

Easily track gainers and losers within the Simple trade section on EXMO. Check real-time updates in the last 24 hours, week and month.

Segmentation of cryptocurrencies based on trading results
(19th – 25th August 2022)

Most traded coins (18th – 24th August 2022)

Top crypto market driving factors

Overall crypto market

▼ 18.08.2022 – House lawmakers sent letters to US crypto miners asking for details on the potential effects of their energy consumption on the environment.

▼ 22.08.2022 – CoinShares: between 15th and 19th August, digital asset investment products saw minor outflows totaling $9 million. At the same time, trading volumes stood at $1 billion, which is 55% off the year’s average and the 2nd lowest this year.

▼ 22.08.2022 – Reuters: the survey showed a 45% median probability of a recession in the USA over the coming year, up from July’s 40%.

▲▼ 23.08.2022 – Officials at the IMF: the correlation between the performance of the Asian equity markets and crypto assets has increased significantly since the start of the pandemic.

Bitcoin (BTC)

▲ 19.08.2022 – Glassnode: the number of BTC addresses with at least 10 coins touched nearly 150,000, which is the highest level since February 2021. Furthermore, the number of addresses holding at least one bitcoin reached an all-time high of 851,921. In addition to the latest surge in large BTC addresses, the Bitcoin supply that was last active approximately 10 years ago also touched an all-time high of 2.5 million coins, or 13% of the BTC supply.

▼ 19.08.2022 – CryptoQuant: Bitcoin miners appear to have taken advantage of the recent upswing to book profits. Data shows that they sold 5,925 BTC in the last two weeks, worth roughly $142 million.

▼ 22.08.2022 – CoinShares: between 15th and 19th August, Bitcoin saw a third consecutive week of mild outflows totaling $15 million. Short-bitcoin saw very minor inflows totaling US$0.2m during the same period.

Ethereum (ETH)

▲ 18.08.2022 – Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group is set to launch Ether options on 12th September 2022, pending a regulatory review.

▲ 18.08.2022 – Ethereum developers confirmed that the Ethereum Merge will officially go live around 15th September 2022!

▲ 22.08.2022 – CoinShares: between 15th and 19th August, Ethereum saw weekly inflows totaling $3 million. Since mid-June, Ethereum has recorded a 9-week run of inflows totaling $162 million.

▲ 23.08.2022 – Santiment: Ethereum now has the highest 30-day rolling average of notable development activity, according to an algorithm for tracking notable daily GitHub submissions.

▲ 24.08.2022 – Ethereum developers shared a new roadmap on how the Merge will happen.

XRP (XRP)

▲ 19.08.2022 – Ripple has partnered with Travelex Bank to launch its on-demand liquidity payment service in Brazil. The service is set to facilitate fast and cost-effective cross-border transactions using XRP.

▲▼ 20.08.2022 – Santiment: on 19th August the number of $100,000 XRP transactions carried out in eight hours hit a high that hadn’t been observed since 13th May 2022. Additionally, sentiment is at its highest since April 2022.

▲ 24.08.2022 – Ripple was announced as a World Economic Forum (WEF) official partner.

Cardano (ADA)

▼ 19.08.2022 – Cardano developer, Adam Deam: Cardano testnet is catastrophically broken due to a bug in Cardano Node v 1.35.2. This was the version that we had previously been told was “tested and ready” for the Vasil Hardfork.

▲ 19.08.2022 – The founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson: the coding issue found on the 1.35.2 node version had been removed in the 1.35.3 update.

▲ 20.08.2022 – Charles Hoskinson: one of the results of the Vasil hard fork will be a new governance process and more inclusive structures that will lead to “more useful code” and “faster developments.”

▲ 22.08.2022 – CoinShares: between 15th and 19th August, altcoins (excluding ether) saw unremarkable inflows. Cardano led the way with inflows totaling $0.5 million.

▲▼ 22.08.2022 – PoolTool: only 31% of Cardano’s staking pool operator (SPO) nodes have already been upgraded to v1.35.3. However, 75% of nodes must be on the newest version before the Vasil hard fork can be implemented.

Solana (SOL)

▲ 18.08.2022 – Cryptocurrency custodian, Copper, will support decentralised finance (DeFi) connectivity with the Solana blockchain to enhance transaction security.

▼ 22.08.2022 – CoinShares: between 15th and 19th August, Solana saw outflows for a second week totaling $1.4 million.

Dogecoin (DOGE)

▲▼ 19.08.2022 – Santiment: a surge in the number of DOGE $100,000 transactions coincided with the new DOGE local maximum. The tops were followed by major price corrections.

▲ 23.08.2022 – Developers at Dogecoin Foundation: the Dogecoin-Ethereum bridge is expected to go live in 2022.

Polkadot (DOT)

▲ 24.08.2022 – Santiment: Polkadot has recorded a high level of positive sentiment this week, along with the highest spike in discussion rate over the past 24 hours since 2021.

Shiba Inu (SHIB)

▲▼ 19.08.2022 – Santiment: a surge in the number of SHIB $100,000 transactions coincided with the new SHIB local maximum. The tops were followed by major price corrections.

▲ 22.08.2022 – Shiba Inu Games’ lead consultant, William Volk, will be attending the world’s largest gaming event and trade show, Gamescom, this month to show off Shiba Eternity.

Uniswap (UNI)

▲ 23.08.2022 – Crypto exchange, Uniswap, engaged in talks with seven nonfungible token (NFT) lending protocols.

Ethereum Classic (ETC)

▲ 18.08.2022 – Ethereum Classic hashrate hit a new all-time high of above 35,279 TH/s.

Algorand (ALGO)

▲ 18.08.2022 – The Algorand team will hold Decipher 2022 between 28th and 30th November 2022 – a second annual community gathering of the builders, businesses, investors, and strategists deciphering the future of Algorand.

Chiliz (CHZ)

▲ 22.08.2022 – Chiliz founder Alexandre Dreyfus: the project intends to stop utilising the Ethereum blockchain to launch its fungible and nonfungible tokens and replace it with its own native chain, CHZ 2.0.

▲ 24.08.2022 – Santiment: amid CHZ’s 150% price surge over the past four weeks, the number of transactions in the Chilliz network hit the highest amount since 29th March 2022.

Maker (MKR)

▲ 23.08.2022 – MakerDAO has opened a $100 million DAI loan to Huntingdon Valley Bank, marking the first integration between a decentralised finance protocol and a traditional U.S. bank.

Toncoin (TON)

▲ 22.08.2022 – Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, was impressed by the success of the auction that TON recently conducted for their domain/wallet names. He admitted that the messenger’s team is inclined to try out TON as the underlying blockchain for their future marketplace.

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.