Triaconta Weekly #285

The following topics will be addressed in this weekly:

  • Bundle performance
  • Winners & Losers
  • Market overview

Bundle performance
The first U.S. interest rate decision of 2024 was Wednesday as expected a 4th pause and investors’ attention is focused on the start of a possible interest rate cut this May. The deflating of Grayscale’s former Bitcoin Fund now Bitcoin ETF has been outpaced for several days by new inflows of dollars into Blackrock and Fidelity Bitcoin ETFs in particular. The daily demand for Bitcoins by these products is many times higher than the daily new production of new bitcoins. Eventually, this should lead to the expected scarcity that speculatively took Bitcoin to $49,000 even before ETF approval. Since the Bitcoin futures expiration on Friday, Jan. 26, we are indeed moving back up. US stock markets are also posting new records again and our own AEX is only 2 points away from its old November 2021 all time high.

Big3:
1 Month: -7.72% | 7D: +2.88% | 24H: +1.30%

Top30:
1 Month: -14.82% | 7D: +3.36% | 24H: +2.64%

Penny:
1 Month: -26.19% | 7D: -1.44% | 24H: +2.67%

DeFi:
1 Month: -15.61% | 7D: +3.64% | 24H: +4.18%

Bitcoin halving countdown: 68 days

Winners & Losers

Chainlink (+26%) posted the highest price in almost two years, breaking out of the three-month range in which the price was stuck between $13 and $17. Avalanche (+14%) shows with the Durango update on its test network in February that it is continuing to develop efficient communication between all chains. Solana (+12%) is trying to break through the $100 barrier again after announcing that a record 12 million new addresses were registered in January. In everything but market capitalization, Solana is currently surpassing Ethereum (+3%). Pepe coin (-14%) unfortunately has not yet contributed anything to the PennyStock bundle but remains one of the most traded même coins. Chiliz (-11%) is correcting for the surge in January.

Market overview

Solana as the biggest riser of 2023 continues happily into 2024. This week, the popular token breaks the $100 barrier again and now surpasses the market value of the Binance token with only Ethereum and Bitcoin ahead of it. Solana and Ethereum are going neck-and-neck in search volume on Google which is likely due to the launch of the Jupiter exchange on Jan. 31. Similar to the rise of Uniswap, it is hoped for a wave of new investment both in Solana and other traded altcoins. According to DefiLlama, a total of $1.14 billion was traded on the first day, which is more than on the largest decentralized exchange UniSwap and even just slightly more than the roughly $1.13 billion on all Ethereum-based platforms combined.

Research from DappRadar shows that the number of daily active users of decentralized applications increased by 5.3 million in January to its highest level since 2022. This is a monthly increase of 18% and shows well the rise in on-chain activity. Web3 games accounted for 1.5M or 28.3% of new active users, followed by DeFi with 1M or 19%. Socialfi dApps were only just the third most active sector with 868,000 daily users after a huge increase of 262% on a monthly basis. Near still has the most active users with 10.2M (down -31%) followed by BNB Chain with 7.8M (up +45%). Solana was, however, the blockchain with the highest transaction volume (343M transactions) despite the fact that the network has only 2.5M daily active users.

The XRP Ledger passed the XLS-30 amendment with 30 of the 35 Node Validators voting in favor, introducing an automated market maker (AMM) on the platform. This allows XRP holders to earn passive income by participating as liquidity providers. Proposals must get 80% of the vote to be included in the code, and although Ripple Labs was in favor they no longer have the sole say. The AMM proposal received a majority vote on Jan. 31 and can be activated on the mainnet within 14 days.