Cryptos Yield To Gravity

Cryptocurrencies continued their decline in the new year thus far with aggregate market capitalization falling to $2.23 trillion. Bitcoin is down 1.74 percent on an overnight basis while Ethereum is down 0.26 percent.

BTC’s dominance or share of market capitalization has fallen to 39.4 percent, from 39.7 a day ago. Ethereum’s market dominance increased to 20.3 percent and the remaining altcoins have risen to 40.3 percent, from 40.1 percent the day before.

Stablecoin market capitalization is currently at $164 billion, commanding a market dominance of 7.32 percent.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $46,775.23, versus $46,306.45 at the end of December, 2021. The lead cryptocurrency has fallen around 32 percent from the all-time-high of $68,789.63 touched on November 10,2021. At current levels, only 66 percent of the BTC holders are in profitable position.

Ethereum’s current price of $3,831.16 compares with $3,682.63 at the end of 2021. At current levels, Ethereum is down around 22 percent from the peak level of $4,891.70 touched in November 2021. 81 percent of holders are in the money even at current prices.

5th ranked Solana (SOL) is down more than 1.5 percent amidst reports that it suffered a denial-of-service attack earlier in the day. The attack is said to be the third of its kind in the past six months.

19th ranked Chainlink (LINK), 20th ranked Algorand (ALGO), 21st ranked NEAR Protocol (NEAR) and 25th ranked Cosmos (ATOM) have made noteworthy strides overnight despite the sea of red in the broader market.

Algorand rallied 1.6 percent. Oracle service provider and 19th ranked Chainlink (LINK) gained around 4.4 percent overnight. 21st ranked NEAR Protocol (NEAR) is one of the best performers among the top-100 cryptocurrencies with a 16.5 percent rally. ATOM too has strengthened close to 7 percent overnight.

NEAR touched an all-time high of $17.29 a few hours ago. The layer-one blockchain is an open-source project focused on smart contracts and the proof-of-stake system. With low transaction fees, it is dubbed a potential Ethereum-killer.

NEAR has also moved to the 14th rank among all crypto coins versus 15th rank in our review dated 30th December. All other coins and tokens are maintaining their respective ranks now also.

Meanwhile, a pilot version of e-CNY, the mobile wallet for China’s digital yuan, has gone live on iOS and Android app stores in China. The app has been listed as developed by the People’s Bank of China’s Digital Currency Research Institute. With the launch, China appears to have gained an early lead in the rollout of Central Bank Digital Currencies.

In regulatory news, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has ordered the decentralized prediction market platform Polymarket to shut down all non-compliant markets and also fined it $1.4 million.

Despite subdued trading sentiment and an almost 1 percent dip in aggregate market capitalization, niche areas in the crypto space continue to drive investor interest. Scaling category has surged more than 9 percent; Oracles added 6 percent; Options have moved up 5.6 percent; Distributed Computing has gained 4 percent; and Interoperability has added 3.7 percent.

Technology, use-cases and relevance are bound to impact valuations in a big way.

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