Bitcoin closes its best January in a decade, Cardano-based Djed stablecoin goes live, while Ethereum developers deploy the Shanghai upgrade ‘shadow fork’. Read our News recap to learn more about the main crypto events that happened between 20th January and 02nd February 2023.

Crypto market in numbers

Between 23rd and 31st January 2023, the capitalisation of the crypto market stood in the range between $1 and $1.050 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. However, after the FED’s interest rate announcement on 01st February 2023, the indicator rose by 4.8% to $1.093 trillion, which has not been observed since the end of August 2022. The market has fully recovered from the FTX crash.

Trading activity has increased slightly. Between 23rd January and 01st February 2023, average daily trading volumes mostly stood at above $50 billion. Then, the market revived a little more, with the indicator rising by 20% to $64 billion.

For the first time since late March 2022, the Cryptocurrency Fear & Greed Index has moved into the “Greed” zone, rising above 60 points. At the moment, the index remains in the range between 55 and 60 points. The sentiment of crypto investors has improved greatly.

The volatility of cryptocurrencies remains high. Since 23rd January 2023, Bitcoin’s 30-day volatility index has risen by 1.72% to 2.36%. The same indicator for ETH has grown by 13% to 2.47%.

Cryptocurrencies and stocks have started to move in a similar direction again. A strong correlation is currently being observed between Nasdaq and BTC. The correlation coefficient stands at 0.93.

Following the FED’s interest rate announcement, the markets responded to the regulator’s softer stance immediately. As a result, high-risk assets, including cryptocurrencies, showed moderate growth. The markets are also awaiting data on the U.S. inflation and reports of tech giants. Considering the increased correlation between stocks and BTC, bitcoin’s high volatility should be expected in mid-February.

Gainer #1 (20th January – 01st February)

GNY +287,1%

Loser #1 (20th January – 01st February)

DEBT -35,9%

Most traded (20th January – 01st February)

BTC ~15,701,675 USD

Top crypto market driving factors

Overall crypto market

▼ 20.01.2023 – Cryptocurrency lender, Genesis, has filed for bankruptcy.

▲ 24.01.2023 – The ARK Invest report outlines that the crypto industry is likely to experience rapid growth due to the adoption of Artificial Intelligence.

▼ 24.01.2023 – EU lawmakers seek tighter rules on banks’ crypto holdings.

▲ 25.01.2023 – Visa CEO, Alfred F. Kelly, believes that stablecoins and CBDCs might have a “significant role” in payments.

▲ 27.01.2023 – Turkey launches a separate crypto institute to monitor the development of the sector.

▲ 27.01.2023 – The Cryptocurrency Fear & Greed Index has entered the ‘Greed’ zone for the first time in 10 months.

▲ 27.01.2023 – Bloomberg: Moody’s is developing a scoring system for stablecoins. It will include an analysis of up to 20 stablecoins based on the quality of attestations on the reserves backing them.

▼ 27.01.2023 – Bloomberg Law: costs for the Sullivan & Cromwell team working on the FTX case will likely climb to hundreds of millions of dollars before the bankruptcy ends.

▲ 28.01.2023 – The White House has published “the Administration’s roadmap” to mitigate crypto risks.

▲ 28.01.2023 – Retail investors continue to hold crypto despite the crypto winter.

▲ 28.01.2023 – Coinshares: digital asset investment products saw inflows totaling $117 million last week, the largest since July 2022.

▲ 31.01.2023 – According to the deVere Group advisory firm, 82% of clients with a net worth of $1 million-$10 million have thought of investing in digital assets.

▲ 31.01.2023 – MetaMask has implemented, with the help of the HAPI project, a new feature that allows users to check smart contracts, tokens and addresses for risk.

▲ 01.02.2023 – The Fed has raised interest rates by 0.25% to 4.75%. If U.S. inflation continues to decline at a rapid pace, the regulator may start to implement rate cuts in the second half of 2023.

▲ 02.02.2023 – Bank of China’s ex-advisor has urged the government to reconsider its crypto ban.

Bitcoin (BTC)

▲ 24.01.2023 – According to Glassnode, long-term holders continue to accumulate BTC and bet on a macro bullish trend.

▲ 26.01.2023 – Tesla reported $34 million in impairment charges to its bitcoin holdings in Q4 2022. The company did not carry out any bitcoin transactions in the reported quarter and currently holds about 9,720 BTC.

▲ 27.01.2023 – Bitcoin’s realised returns are back in the green, according to ‘PlanB.’

▲ 27.01.2023 – Bitcoin’s hashrate hit a new high of 320 EH/s.

▲ 30.01.2023 – According to Matrixport’s chief strategist, American institutional investors are “not giving up on crypto”. Data shows that they account for 85% of bitcoin buying.

▲ 31.01.2023 – January 2023 is Bitcoin’s best-performing month since October 2021.

▼ 31.01.2023 – According to Glassnode, exchange flows have returned to normal after the impulse of outflows following the FTX crash.

▼ 01.02.2023 – Tesla recorded a $140 million loss on its Bitcoin investments in 2022.

▲ 01.02.2023 – In January 2023, the revenue of Bitcoin miners increased by 50% month-on-month to $23 million, the highest since August 2022.

Ethereum (ETH)

▲ 20.01.2023 – Crypto.com: Ethereum owners grew by 263% from 24 million in January 2022 to 87 million in December 2022.

▲ 24.01.2023 – Ethereum developers have deployed the Shanghai upgrade ‘shadow fork’.

▲ 25.01.2023 – There are now over 503,000 active Proof of Stake validators on the Ethereum Beacon Chain.

▲ 01.02.2023 – Ethereum developers will launch the new ‘Zhejiang’ testnet for simulating ETH withdrawals.

▲ 01.02.2023 – More than 10,000 ETH have been burned over the last 30 days.

Cardano (ADA)

▼ 23.01.2023 – The Cardano network suffered a brief outage between blocks 8300569 and 8300570, which caused nearly 50% of nodes to disconnect and restart.

▲ 24.01.2023 – Cardano’s wallet addresses have surpassed 3.9 million.

▲ 25.01.2023 – The COTI Network officially announced the launch of the Djed stablecoin.

▲ 31.01.2023 – The Djed stablecoin went live on the Cardano mainnet.

▲ 01.02.2023 – The launch of the Djed stablecoin has resulted in increased search interest for Cardano.

Dogecoin (DOGE)

▲ 31.01.2023 – Twitter’s upcoming payments tool will initially support only fiat currencies, but Elon Musk wants it to potentially support crypto in the future.

▲ 01.02.2023 – According to Santiment, Dogecoin saw its highest whale transactions of the year on 31st January 2023.

Litecoin (LTC)

▲ 25.01.2023 – Messari.io data shows that LTC outshined BTC and ETH by ROI in one-year timeframes.

▲ 26.01.2023 – Santiment has revealed that whale transactions are spiking for Litecoin.

▲ 31.01.2023 – Addresses holding between 100 and 10,000 LTC have added 1.15 million more coins in the past six months.

Shiba Inu (SHIB)

▲ 20.01.2023 – According to developers, the Shibarium beta launch has entered the final stage.

▲ 23.01.2023 – Ethereum whales bought $422 million worth of Shiba Inu in less than a week.

Chainlink (LINK)

▲ 26.01.2023 – In 2022, the Chainlink network enabled more than $6.9 trillion in transaction value, while growing to include more than 1,600 projects.

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