Weekly Digest - December 19, 2022

Weekly Digest - December 19, 2022

Over the past week, the crypto market sentiment has ranged from deep fear to Christmas cheer. The week started with a market boost from positive US CPI data, continued with a successful auction of Mr. Trump’s hilarious NFT Christmas cards, but ended up on a negative side after the US Fed indicated further interest rate increases and a group of US senators introduced a harsh new bill aimed at treating crypto players like traditional banks.

Market indices and prices:

  • Fear and greed index is currently 29. The index broke the 30-point mark on December 15 for the first time since November 8, while the average for the past week was 28.5. The index has been gradually improving after it hit the lowest level of 20 in the week of FTX bankruptcy filing.
  • Crypto Volatility Index (CVI) is 76.2 at press time on December 19. The CVI is at the same level as a week ago. The index had declined during the week on the news of SBF arrest, increasing market oversight and Binance record withdrawals (please see below for more details on this), but subsequently recovered.
  • Total market capitalization declined and, unlike CVI, did not recover. It currently stands at $807 billion. In the past 7 days, the market cap was the highest on December 15, when it climbed up to $885 billion for a few hours, but reached its lowest level of $798 billion by the end of the day on December 17. While the drop is significant, we expect it to recover as the regulation and criminal investigation hysteria cools down.
  • The bitcoin dominance on December 19 is 38.87%, an increase of 0.17% from 38.7% on December 12.

BTC price as of today (9:00am UTC) was $16,762, which is 2.9% lower than the 7-day VWMA (volume weighted moving average) of $17,255. During the past week, BTC experienced relatively high volatility, with the highest price of $18,318 on December 14, and the lowest price of $16,585 on December 16. The 20-day EMA (exponential moving average) is currently at $17,040. Analysts continue to look for the bear market bottom, but it might be that BTC is not ready for the bull run yet.

ETH price as of today (9:00am UTC) was $1,184. The ETH last week’s price movements were similar to BTC. The 7-day VWMA level of $1,243 is currently close to the 20-day EMA level of $1,239.

The best performing altcoins in the past 7 days were:

  • TON (Ton Coin) tops the list again this week with a price increase of 32.8%. The TON price increased by 12.8% last week, and if we look at the TON Coin price starting December 1, 2022, the increase was 49.2%. TON is a native coin of Ton layer 1 blockchain developed by Telegram in 2018. Telegram abandoned TON in May 2020, and it has been maintained by the TON foundation since then. The TON is buoyed by the recent announcements of Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, who promised “to build a set of decentralized tools, including non-custodial wallets and decentralized exchanges”.
  • XDC (XDC Network) price increased by 15.5%. XDC is a native cryptocurrency for the XDC Network. The XDC Network, formerly known as XinFin Network, is an enterprise-grade, EVM-compatible blockchain equipped with interoperable smart contracts. A highly optimized, bespoke fork of Ethereum, the XDC Network reaches consensus through a delegated proof-of-stake (dPoS) mechanism, which allows for two-second transaction time, near zero gas fees, and over 2,000 transactions per second (TPS).
  • OKB (OKB) is the currency of our rival, the OKEX cryptocurrency exchange. It was the third best-performer last week with a price surge of 4.6%.

The top 3 losers were TWT, XCN and FIL.

  • TWT (Trust Wallet Token) in the past seven days lost all its November and December gains. The price dropped by 36.4% going back to the price level of November 12. As we noted in our previous blog post, the price surge was mostly attributed to the growing popularity of self-custody wallets, but as we can see this week, it was not long-lasting.

What else happened:

  • Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) did not have a chance to testify at the US House hearing on Tuesday, since he was arrested in the Bahamas at the request of the US Government. He will surely spend Christmas time in prison, awaiting extradition hearing. The indictment charges SBF with eight counts of fraud that come with a maximum prison sentence of 115 years.
  • The crypto critics in the US House did not waste time and chose a perfect moment to crash the emerging industry by introducing the Digital Asset Anti- Money Laundering Act of 2022. Crypto community responded harshly by labeling it unconstitutional, opportunistic and “the most significant attack on digital freedom ever seen”.
  • And while the advent of crypto skeptics seems scary, December cannot go without miracles. Mr Donald Trump, who called bitcoin a scam about a year ago, unleashed his own NFT collection. The collection was sold in less than a day bringing Mr. Trump $4.5 million in revenue. If you think it’s a lot in one day, do not be surprised if you hear that he will continue to make money from his NFT sales on a secondary market. The underlying smart contract implies 10% commission to the author from each subsequent sale on NFT marketplaces.
  • Trump's success was not the only positive moment of the week. On Friday, Aztec Network, which calls its technology as VPN for Ethereum, raised $100 million in a round led by a16z. The investment indicates that crypto is still in the focus of large VCs.
  • Despite all the positives, Binance experienced outflows of more than $1.2 billion last Tuesday. While the amount of withdrawals declined subsequently, the exchange still experiences net outflows. Investors were scared after Reuters reported that Binance and its executives are under investigation by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) for possible money laundering and criminal sanctions violations.

While most analysts believe that Binance might be able to weather the storm, it is a good time to diversify. If you were one of those who fled Binance, you plan to do it soon, or maybe you are still not sure which platform to use for crypto trading, try out HitBTC! We are not only the oldest exchange on the market that has never been hacked, but we are also one of the fastest and technologically advanced. Sign up or login here.

Coming soon to HitBTC:

  • League of Kingdoms Arena (LOKA) is a governance token of the League of Kingdoms Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) strategy game. During gameplay, users can build kingdoms, raise armies, form alliances and compete on the battlefields for power and wealth. The game supports player-versus-environment (PvE), player-versus-player (PvP) and party-play (MMO) gaming modes. LOKA allows holders to take part in the decision-making process on the platform and purchase in-game items.

HitBTC is proud to announce the upcoming listing of two GALA games tokens:

  • Town Start (TOWN) is a token that was created by Gala Games exclusively as a reward for playing-to-earn with Town Star NFTs. Town Star is 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 by several major exchanges.
  • SILK (SILK) is the game token of Spider Tanks, which is a Play and Earn (P&E) Ecosystem that revolves around playing Spider Tanks matches and receiving Victory Points that can be submitted for game token reward distribution.

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 portfolio!

Cheers,

HitBTC team