Crypto market update: Only metaverse cryptos avoid bloodbath
Investors fear central banks hawkish stances
The crypto bloodbath persisted at midday on Thursday 20 January, further wiping away investors’ gains.
The price of leading cryptos continued to slump – apart from ether, which gained 0.4%, in the wake of an Emergen Research study that predicted global non-fungible token market will grow to $3.57trn by 2030.
Signs of an uncertain future
Uncertainty is continuing on both the crypto markets and traditional stock markets – both were mixed at midday Thursday. It came as the EU’s statistical office, Eurostat, revealed the annual inflation rate for the euro area hit 5.0% in December 2021, up from 4.9% in November.
Despite being in line with expectations, concerns are growing that the inflation data could trigger a more hawkish stance from the European Central Bank, which has indicated the prospect of higher interest rates when it ends of its quantitative easing programme. If so, this would be in line with US Federal Reserve’s recent approach, which left the 10-year Treasury note hovering just above 1.83% earlier today.
Meanwhile, as supply concerns limit profit taking sales, the price of Brent crude was 0.3% lower at $88.19 a barrel, with US West Texas Intermediate lower by 0.2% at $86.76. Gold was $1,841.50 an ounce, around 0.2% lower in the last 24 hours.
The major cryptocurrencies were mostly trading lower at midday with investors worried as the large crypto miners Marathon Digital Holding and Riot Blockchain suffered in the last US trading session.
Low volumes for bitcoin
According to Currency.com, BTC, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, is trading 0.3% lower over the past 24 hours at $42,056.88 – and 3.9% lower over the past seven days.
The market cap of BTC was around $796.3bn, representing around 39% of the total crypto market capitalisation, while the leading crypto’s trading volume was around 32.2% lower at $16.7bn in the past 24 hours.
The total crypto market capitalisation was almost stable at $1.983trn, in the past 24 hours.
Ethereum and Solana gain but volumes fall
By contrast, the digital silver, ether (ETH) was trading 0.4% higher at $3.139.59, with a market capitalisation of $374.3bn. The cryptocurrency’s trading volume was around 39.6% low at $8.6bn in the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, in line with major stablecoins, binance coin (BNB), the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was trading 0.4% lower at $462.97, with a market cap of $76.4bn and a trading volume of $1.6bn – almost 19.5% lower in the past 24 hours.
Solana, on the other hand, ether’s main competitor in powering NFTs and the metaverse, was trading 0.7% higher at $137.50, with a market cap of $43.bn and a trading volume of $714m, down 55% in the last 24 hours. Finally, Cardano (ADA) was trading 6.2% lower at $1.34.
Top gainers and losers
Elsewhere, the likes of several other minor cryptos witnessed an increase of more than 100% in the past 24 hours.
On the flip side of the coin, Gomb (GOMB) was trading down by over 100%.
All prices are correct as of 13:15 GMT (UTC -1).
