Triaconta Weekly #241

The following topics will be addressed in this weekly:

  • Bundle performance
  • Winners & Losers
  • Market overview

Bundle performance
The stock market was already anticipating good U.S. inflation data and it was down from 7.1% to 6.5% as expected. The Fed is still talking seriously about the economy but interest rate hikes seem near the end. Europe is going to survive the energy crisis due to the mild winter. The simultaneous growth of the crypto market shows that everything is connected these days. And also that we can cautiously start to believe that this recovery may continue for a while, although it is becoming time for a correction. Bitcoin and some other Top 30 crypto broke through their 200-day average this week and technically it is now waiting for a test of this average as support for further gains. Bitcoin then should not fall lower than $19,500 or about €18,000. We will see as there is also plenty of room to the upside. Another excellent week for all bunds with DeFi overtaking PennyStock.

Big3:
1 Month: +20.81% | 7D: +8.55% | 24H: +1.01%

Top30:
1 Month: +28.39% | 7D: +7.75% | 24H: +0.76%

Penny:
1 Month: +35.97% | 7D: +6.92% | 24H: +1.02%

DeFi:
1 Month: +40.21% | 7D: +8.15% | 24H: +1.77%

Winners & Losers
Decentraland (+44%) is already correcting, but still the biggest riser this week. The Metaverse project itself shows little new development, so we attribute this to speculation for now. Confidence in DeFi is returning with gains for Convex Finance (+38%) and Synthetix (+30%) recently added to the DeFi bundle. The top 30 bundle coins Hedera (+29%) and Solana (+28%) also continued their recovery. For a second week in a row, there were no significant losers.

Market overview

Analysis website Glassnode sees in the current Bitcoin development a remarkable similarity with 2018-2019. Then Bitcoin’s decline ended after being below the 200-day average for 386 days and then continued to rise 170%. Breaking through 200-day average now took 381 days. The same rise would put us at a Bitcoin price of $53,000 and close to the $1 trillion market cap. Now, nothing goes up in a straight line, of course.

The Litecoin hashrate shot to a new all-time high of 680 TH/s as the price continues to rise ahead of the upcoming halving. In the past, Litecoin has always risen significantly during this period, rising 820% in the 122 days before the first halving and 550% in the 243 days before the second. A higher hashrate means a more secure network with more participants in the mining process. The next halving of the block reward is expected for Litecoin in 184 days in August 2023.

Today is the last day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. WEF is a major annual conference of top executives from governments, businesses and civil society organizations. On the agenda for 2023 on Thursday was “Finding the Right Balance for Crypto” with participants including our own Central Bank President Klaas Knot, Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, and Mairead McGuinnes, the architect of the new EU crypto regulation MiCA. A new insight was that a quick international payment is something different from tokenized CO2 or a highly sought-after NFT. It is not the crypto that needs to be regulated, but its various applications and probably each with a very different framework and then globally to make it really work.

Also presented at Davos was the world’s first automotive project on Cardano. eTukTuk is a uniquely innovative, affordable and accessible platform for drivers who are currently excluded from switching to EVs. The first application will come in Sri Lanka where 1.2 million traditional TukTuks are in operation, 70% of them in the capital Colombo. Through the Cardano blockchain, customers will be able to pay digitally, encouraging the switch to EVs and a network of charging stations with rewards.

What is TVL? It stands for “Total Value Locked” and is one of the metrics we use to compile the DeFi bundle alongside market capitalization and trading volume. The TVL is used to measure the total value of assets deposited or committed to a specific platform, protocol or smart contract. Assets can include collateral for loans, used for staking or yield farming, or redeployed to participate in other DeFi products and services. This metric is used to measure the overall health and activity of a DeFi project or ecosystem. It is an important measure of the number of users and to what extent they trust a particular platform or protocol. A high TVL suggests that many users trust the platform and that many assets are locked in, which can lead to more users and more assets. In contrast, a low TVL may indicate low interest in the platform or security concerns.