Hello, Geckos!
We have officially survived the first half of the year 2020! Many things have happened, and we are euphoric to announce the release of our Q2 2020 Quarterly Cryptocurrency Report!
We are doing things slightly differently this time 😉. There will be a three-part release to our Q2 2020 Quarterly Cryptocurrency Report. You’re looking at the very first release of our Q2 2020 Quarterly Cryptocurrency Report, which provides an overview of Top-30 Market Dynamics, Bitcoin, and Top-5 Stablecoins. Stay tuned for the other parts!
Cryptocurrency Market Overview
The start of the Q2 has been turbulent but nevertheless ended on a positive note with market capitalization growing by 44.5%. Things appear to have calmed down later during the quarter, as evident by the decline in spot trading volume which is typically highly correlated with market movements.
However, this may also simply be a result of investors HODL-ing, having no confidence to trade, or perhaps a market shift towards DeFi and Derivatives trading.
Examining the Top 30 coins, there are three market dominance winners for Q2 with Ethereum gaining the highest (+1.6%), followed by Bitcoin (+0.3%), and Tether (+0.2%). The rest lost its share, with XRP losing the most ground (-1.3%).
Bitcoin’s average monthly price is now up 78% from the March bottom. It took roughly 48 days for the markets to recover from the vertical drop of the Black Thursday, the day when Bitcoin fell vertically by 35% (over $3000 USD) in a span of 24 hours.
However, Bitcoin’s average total spot trading volume is depicting a downward trend since May as the price recovers, down by 20% quarter-on-quarter.
Q2 2020 was a quarter filled with hope and excitement for Bitcoin as it underwent its third halving event. On May 11th 2020, the halving slashed mining rewards from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC, effectively halving earnings for all Bitcoin miners.
Post-halving, Bitcoin’s hashrate dropped by 27% despite not having much price changes during that time. Interestingly enough, despite little price movement post-halving, the hashrate climbed back up to pre-halving levels. This is likely due to miners moving over to Sichuan, China to take advantage of the cheap hydro-electric power resulting from the rainy season.
Although Tether only grew 0.3% in market dominance, they are now up by almost $1.2 Billion in market cap within Q2 2020 – that is a 14% increase in the span of 3 months.
To put in a bigger perspective, Tether is reaching close to $10 Billion in market cap, more than doubled than the number it started this year. We are also seeing a high correlation between Bitcoin’s price and Tether circulating supply beginning from April to June this year.
It is expected as Tether is the most popular stablecoin in the market Many cryptocurrencies are traded against Tether or other stablecoins to allow traders to easily gauge their values in terms of US Dollars.
However, earlier we see both total spot trading in the cryptocurrency market and Bitcoin itself are going in a downtrend. It may suggest demand for Tether is used outside the trading venue.
Want to know more?
Just kidding!
You can read the full report here!
Q2 2020 Quarterly Cryptocurrency Report: Part 2 will be coming up next!
Stay tuned and subscribe to our Daily Newsletter or follow us on Twitter (@coingecko) for announcements!