16 April 2020 – CoinGecko, the world’s leading independent cryptocurrency aggregator, has just released its 2020 Q1 Cryptocurrency Report. The 55-page report provides an overview of the state of the cryptocurrency markets over the past quarter with market insights, major events and more.
“This quarter is one that we most definitely want to erase from memory. Not only was the world ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw massive losses in the stock and crypto market. However, with every massive drop in price, there is always an opportunity to buy cryptocurrencies for cheap. As we enter Q2, we hope that the COVID-19 situation will subside and markets will improve,” said TM Lee, co-founder of CoinGecko.
Cryptocurrency Overview
The first quarter of 2020 has been a rough ride – overall cryptocurrency market capitalization shrank by 5% and wiped out all gains made at the start of the year as COVID-19 panic hit. Bitcoin and many cryptocurrencies fell by over 40% on Black Thursday, 12 March 2020. Overall, the top 5 cryptocurrencies saw the following Q1 price changes: Bitcoin (-11%), Ethereum (+3%), XRP (-10%), BCH (+7%), BSV (+70%). Bitcoin SV was the largest gainer as rumours spread of Craig Wright having access to Satoshi’s Bitcoin private keys.
In terms of market capitalization dominance amongst the top 30 cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin lost significant market dominance, decreasing from 71.3% to 67.8% (-3.5%). Tether, on the other hand gained the largest market dominance, increasing from 2.56% to 3.66% (+1.1%). Most other cryptocurrencies saw marginal gains in their market dominance at the expense of Bitcoin.
Other Highlights
- Binance continued its aggressive growth and dominates crypto markets
Binance continued its aggressive growth in Q1 and now dominates almost every metric available. Binance Futures gained the most, taking a large chunk of market share and dethroning BitMEX as the top derivative exchange by Bitcoin Perpetual Swap trading volume. Its Bitcoin Perpetual Swap volume dominance increased from 22.9% to 38.0%. In terms of spot trading, Binance continuously maintained 50-75% of volume amongst Bitwise 10 real volume exchanges. Lastly, in terms of web traffic, Binance has 29% of all web traffic to the top 20 crypto exchanges websites, roughly 4 times larger than their nearest spot exchange competitors – Bithumb, Coinbase, and Upbit.
- Bitcoin may not be a safe haven
Bitcoin may not be a safe haven One question loomed across the financial industry throughout the COVID-19 crisis: “Is Bitcoin a safe haven?”. CoinGecko research found that Bitcoin had a 30-days correlation of 0.9 to the S&P 500. As stocks declined, Bitcoin declined, but in a more severe manner. In a Twitter poll conducted by CoinGecko, 63% of respondents believe that Bitcoin is a safe haven. When compared to Gold, Bitcoin showed a positive 5-year correlation of 0.6, suggesting that this was a major reason people believe in the long-term viability of Bitcoin as a safe haven similar to Gold.
- 54% of crypto users do not trust the banking system and ready to go bankless
In a survey of 700 crypto users conducted by CoinGecko, half of the participants who are familiar with DeFi said they would go completely bankless as they do not trust the banking system. For decentralized applications brand awareness, the majority of participants said that they were most aware of Metamask, followed by Kyber Network. Tether was the most popular stablecoin held by the participants followed by DAI.
Breaking down the Q1 Report at CoinGecko’s First Virtual Meetup
In conjunction with the release of the Q1 Report, CoinGecko will be hosting its first virtual meetup. The complimentary event will be held on:
Date: Friday, 17 April 2020
Time: 10:00AM to 12:00PM Singapore Time (GMT +8)
The Virtual Meetup will feature a presentation by co-founder, Bobby Ong, who will be deep-diving into this report.
There will also be a special panel on “DeFi Today & the Plan for the Future” featuring Kain Warwick (Founder of Synthetix), Loi Luu (CEO of Kyber Network), Leighton Cusack (CEO of Pool Together), and Anthony Sassano (Product Marketing Manager at TokenSets).
Registration is Free: https://bit.ly/3ejq5Fw