Market Analysis

ATOM bulls watch closely as Cosmos interchain security prepares for March 15 launch

Cosmos governance has approved the v9-Lambda upgrade, including interchain security and possibly kicking off a “virtuous real yield cycle.”

The Cosmos community has approved a vote to add “replicated security (RS)” to its chain, with 99.99% of votes in favor of the motion. The much-awaited upgrade is set to go live on March 15, 2023, with the v9-Lamba upgrade. 

RS is the first version of Cosmos’s Interchain Security (ICS) feature, allowing blockchains in the Cosmos ecosystem to share validation resources for improved security.

Only protocols approved by Cosmos governance will be added as consumer chains in the upcoming update. Eight consumer chains are potential candidates for selection, including Neutron, PolymerDAO, Duality, Stride, Simply Staking, FairBlock and Comdex.

Cosmos’s interchain security could start a virtuous real yield cycle

The Replicated Security feature will distribute up to 25% of the consumer chain fees to Cosmos Hub stakers. The protocols can also allocate a portion of token inflation and revenue streams to Cosmos (ATOM) stakers.

The ICS implementation allows consumer chains to focus entirely on the growth of the network’s economy, as Cosmos Hub’s validators provide reliable security against 51% attacks and double-spending. This will bring additional yield to ATOM stakers and allow consumer chains to optimize for growth.

The staking reward for ATOM after adjusting for inflation is 6.82%, with 24.37% annual returns. The additional consumer chain yields will improve ATOM holders’ annual yield, encouraging more buying and staking activity.

Cosmos staking rewards inflation adjustment. Source: Staking Rewards

Neutron is a smart contract platform that will likely be the first consumer chain to use the new ICS feature. Avril Dutheil, general manager of Neutron, told Cointelegraph:

“As a result [of RS], Neutron does not have to inflate the Neutron (NTRN) supply continuously to keep validators honest or pay staking yield to governance participants since they do not contribute to securing the network.”

Dutheil added, “Instead, NTRN can afford to have a fixed supply, a release schedule indexed on on-chain activity and constant buy-and-burn pressure from Neutron’s three streams of revenue.”

This will allow the consumer chains to focus on the blockchain’s real yield and bring additional yield to ATOM stakers as the price increases. Consequently, high yields for staking ATOM will motivate more users to purchase and stake ATOM. Hence, potentially giving rise to a virtuous investment cycle in the Cosmos ecosystem.

Bullish Cosmos ecosystem growth appears

The Cosmos ecosystem has grown significantly in the last two years as more chains use the Cosmos-SDK and Tendermint consensus mechanism to spin up application chains. Implementing improved cross-chain features like RS will allow blockchains to benefit from the liquidity in the Cosmos ecosystem.

Circle’s announcement of a native USD Coin (USDC) blockchain on Cosmos will likely be a potent catalyst to improve the ecosystem’s liquidity. Dutheil mentioned multiple decentralized stablecoin projects like Agoric’s Inter Stable Token (IST) and Kujira’s USK, which look to replicate the success of Ethereum-based decentralized stablecoins on Cosmos. It will also help establish ATOM as a reliable collateral and improve its value proposition. Dutheil added,

“Whether or not these decentralized alternatives will succeed in scaling their offering across the Interchain remains to be seen, but at least the building blocks are there to finally bring a well-integrated DeFi ecosystem to Cosmos.“

Technically, the ATOM/USD pair has formed a bullish ascending triangle pattern since forming the June 2022 lows at $6. A breakout from the triangle around the $14 and $15 resistance levels could see the asset tap 2022 bearish breakdown levels around $33, with a slight chance of tapping the all-time highs around $46. However, the bullish thesis would be invalidated if the price breaks an falls below the triangle’s base, currently hovering around $10.

CryptoQuant data shows that ATOM’s relative strength index and Stochastic indicator are in the oversold category, suggesting a possible trend shift.

ATOM/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView

While a bullish ATOM thesis looks plausible, its realization will depend on the usage and whether or not consumer chains can bring meaningful returns to ATOM stakers.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

How do the Fed’s interest rates impact the crypto market?

Cointelegraph analyst and writer Marcel Pechman explains how the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rates impact the crypto market.

The show Macro Markets, hosted by Marcel Pechman, which airs every Friday at 12 pm ET on the Cointelegraph Markets & Research YouTube channel, explains complex concepts in layman’s terms and focuses on the cause and effect of traditional financial events on the day-to-day crypto activity.

In today’s episode, crypto analyst Pechman analyzes the United States Federal Reserve interest rate and its relationship with cryptocurrency markets. For instance, high-interest rates are detrimental to risk assets. However, investors usually price today’s action on how the economy will be in six months or longer.

Viewers will learn why trusting charts and indicators can be misleading, as anyone can pick timeframes and scales that favor their biases and opinions. Pechman shows this in real-time by literally adjusting the scales and time frames to match his school of thought.

The episode continues by explaining the correlation between Bitcoin and the stock market — especially when investors fear a recession is coming or the cost of capital favors fixed income — followed by a deep dive into volatility indicators, including the stock market volatility index (VIX). 

Pechman goes on to explain how the most common volatility metric is backward-looking and even more complex instruments, such as the VIX indicator, should be interpreted.

To close the Macro Markets show, Pechman will apply his expert knowledge to explain real-life examples from gold markets, Tesla stocks and news articles in a straightforward and non-technical manner.

If you are looking for exclusive and valuable content provided by leading crypto analysts and experts, make sure to subscribe to the Cointelegraph Markets & Research YouTube channel. Join us at Macro Markets every Friday at 12:00 pm ET.

Can Bitcoin reach $25K again in March 2023? Watch Market Talks live

Join us as we discuss what March 2023 holds in store for Bitcoin. Will it touch $25,000 again or will it break past and flip it to support?

In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Adrian Zduńczyk, or as he is known on Twitter, CryptoBirb. He is the founder and CEO of The Birb Nest, a trading community platform. He is also a chartered market technician, chemical engineer, entrepreneur, mentor and influencer with over 655,000 followers on Twitter.

We start things off with a simple question: What is Zduńczyk’s general approach or set of procedures that he goes through when he begins to connect with the markets in the mornings? How does he begin to decide if he should trade on any given day or stay away altogether? What are some comprehensive metrics that he looks at to gauge the overall market direction and sentiment, especially when studying altcoins? 

There was a lot of excitement at the start of 2023 with Bitcoin (BTC) finally breaking out of its sideways action and making a move toward the upside. Now that things have settled down a bit and the price of Bitcoin is lingering around the $23,000 range, we ask Zduńczyk how he feels about the market and if there are any coins that stand out to him during this time.

The next Bitcoin halving is still about a year and a month away, yet people are already starting to talk about it and formulate strategies for it. We get Zduńczyk’s insights into how he thinks this cycle might be developing.

It’s already March, and it seems that Zduńczyk thinks that it might not be as kind as February was for Bitcoin — we ask him for his reasoning behind this claim. Bitcoin seems to be touching the $25,000 mark and coming back down to hover around $23,000. What needs to happen for Bitcoin to flip $25,000 to support and move past it?

We cover all this and more, so make sure to stay tuned until the end because Cointelegraph Markets & Research will also be taking your questions and comments throughout the show, so be sure to have them ready to go.

Market Talks streams live every Thursday at 12:00 pm ET (5:00 pm UTC). Each week, it features interviews with some of the most influential and inspiring people from the crypto and blockchain industry. So, head on over to Cointelegraph Markets & Research’s YouTube page and smash those Like and Subscribe buttons for all our future videos and updates.

How Fantom and Optimism’s DeFi and DApp development directly affects FTM and OP price action

Despite similar price action, Fantom and Optimism ecosystems are moving in opposite directions and this is reflected in each token’s price.

The price action of Optimism (OP) and Fantom (FTM) tokens have been quite identical since the last quarter of 2022. The difference is that volatility is slightly higher for OP, which surged 240% year-to-date, compared to the 180% gains seen in FTM.

The Fantom Foundation has made several improvements since Q4 2022, which have catalyzed an uptrend in the token’s price. However, Fantom’s ecosystem remains primitive while its competitors expanded to support new use cases.

On the other hand, Optimism has shown robust community and decentralized application (DApp) development thanks to the loyalty of Ethereum developers and the Optimism Foundation’s effective strategy in aligning token incentives with governance.

OP/USD (orange) and FTM/USD (blue) price chart. Source: TradingView

Fantom’s ecosystem development stalls

The Fantom ecosystem received an adverse blow in early 2022 due to the departure of leading DeFi architect Andre Cronje. The blockchain’s ecosystem development stalled after Cronje’s departure. At the same time, Fantom’s competitors, like Polygon (MATIC), Cosmos (ATOM), Arbitrum and Optimism, continued to host various popular applications.

Cronje rejoined Fantom development efforts in November, however, it appears it was too late by then. The lack of sustainable yields in a bear market has restricted liquidity inflows to Fantom.

Fantom TVL over time. Source: DefiLlama

The Fantom community also aimed to improve the quality of decentralized applications on the blockchain through an ecosystem development fund built by reducing the portion of burnt fees from 20% to 5% in December. While the number of smart contracts created on Fantom has spiked significantly since Q3 2022, the quality of DApps still needs to improve compared to its competitors.

Number of smart contracts created on Fantom. Source: Dune

The 30-day activity billboard from Nansen shows that top dApp activity on Fantom was limited to simple swaps, which is discouraging as other activities like derivatives trading, social media platforms and NFT trading are prospering on competing chains like Arbitrum, Polygon, and Optimism.

The most used DApps on Fantom between Jan. 20 and Feb. 20 was XEN Crypto, a free mint Ponzi scheme-like application. The application first appeared on Ethereum in October, with a lot of excitement in the first few days of launch. However, the hype subsided after the mint became unprofitable as many users crowded the platform.

Top Fantom dApps by usage in the last 30 days. Source: Nansen

Optimism developers find success with new use cases

At the same time, Optimism has successfully attracted liquidity and activity to its ecosystem after launching the Optimism token and accompanying airdrop campaigns. In April, the Optimism team stated there would be a “season of airdrops” and launched an Optimism Quest campaign.

The layer-2 network saw increased usage from users for collecting its nonfungible tokens, which would likely make them eligible for the airdrop. The Quests ended in January, following which there was a steep decline in activity. However, DeFi liquidity remained sticky.

The total liquidity on Optimism. Source: DefiLlama

Moreover, the activity on Optimism is quite diverse. The list of most used decentralized applications on Optimism includes yield platform Pool Together, derivatives platforms Synthetix and Perpetual Protocol and leading lending platform Aave.

Optimism also hosts a decentralized blogging platform, Mirror, which allows content writers to issue their articles as NFTs. The platform has gained significant usage, with 2.7 million hits on its website.

Top Optimism dApps by usage in the last 30 days. Source: Nansen

On Feb. 24, the largest U.S. exchange, Coinbase, announced its layer-2 blockchain, which uses the same technological design as Optimism. The announcement added that the exchange is closely working with the Optimism Collective with a vision to connect blockchains built on the same technological stack, collectively known as the Optimism ecosystem. This could possibly be the beginning of a big step for Optimism where other businesses follow Coinbase into joining and enhancing Optimism’s liquidity and activity.

Comparing the tokenomics of FTM and OP

One drawback of the Optimism token is that it is only a governance token and doesn’t entitle users to real yields in gas fees. The OP tokens’ supply will inflate at 2% per year, along with investor and team unlocks that begin in April.

However, the Optimism team has incentivized participation in governance, which improves the protocol’s governance and also aligns incentives with its intended use, i.e., higher voter participation.

Optimism’s governance has proved more efficient than competitors like Uniswap (UNI) and Compound (COMP) in promoting decentralization. The layer-2 network’s ecosystem is also expanding by supporting diverse applications. Optimism also stands to benefit from Arbitrum’s native token launch, which will likely add fuel to the layer-2 token narrative, pushing the OP token’s price higher.

Related: Vitalik shows support for Optimism’s governance structure and OP gas proposal

For Fantom, despite implementing a burn feature in its protocol, the real yield of the platform is still negative, around -0.93%. The blockchain’s fees and liquidity must improve considerably to enhance the value of FTM. Otherwise, it risks becoming irrelevant alongside many other layer-1 protocols in the market.

Technically, FTM can see more upside while it holds support above $0.38 and target the $0.95 support and resistance area. A breakdown below $0.38 could see it dropping toward $0.19.

FTM/USD weekly chart. Source: TradingView

For OP, its price surged above its previous peak of $2.30, which will now act as a support for further upside as it experiences a price discovery. On the flipside, a breakdown below this level could see the token’s price drop toward $1.30.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Simple trading strategies with Cryptomom — Watch Market Talks live

Join us as we discuss some simple trading strategies to help you navigate the crypto space in a post-FTX world.

In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Brenda Gentry, or as she’s known on Twitter, Cryptomom. Gentry has over 15 years of experience in traditional banking. She started researching and investing in cryptocurrencies during the 2020 lockdowns and made substantial returns in 2021 after which she launched Gentry Media Productions. She is currently on a mission to introduce more women and minorities to Web3, decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

We kick things off with a report from the Bank of International Settlements, which found that the median retail investor lost 50% of their Bitcoin (BTC) investment in the past seven years. We ask Gentry what her thoughts are on this, given her background in finance, and also what are some ways that crypto investors can avoid becoming part of this statistic.

Sports betting is all the rage now, with non-stop commercials from different companies encouraging people to take part and sports commentators talking about it during their shows to get more people interested. We ask Gentry about her newly acquired sports betting platform, BundleBets, and why and how she got interested in the business.

If you ask 10 people what Web3 is, you’ll get 10 different answers. We get Gentry’s take on what Web3 means to her and how she sees it grow and evolve as we move forward. Plot twist! She can’t use any of the current buzzwords to define it. 

As much as we all would like to forget about Terra and the whole FTX debacle, you really cannot have a conversation about crypto without mentioning either one. We get Gentry’s experience of it all and how she weathered it. We also ask her what her simple trading strategy is in a post-FTX world where you never know what company could go belly up next.

One of the major contributing factors to crypto’s success is retail investors. Understandably, most of them are hesitant to get into the space after the FTX and Terra events. What are things that they need to see happen or hear to lure them back into crypto?

We cover all this and more, so make sure to stay tuned until the end because Cointelegraph Markets & Research will also be taking your questions and comments throughout the show, so be sure to have them ready to go.

Market Talks streams live every Thursday at 12:00 pm ET (5:00 pm UTC). Each week, it features interviews with some of the most influential and inspiring people from the crypto and blockchain industry. So, head on over to Cointelegraph Markets & Research’s YouTube page and smash those Like and Subscribe buttons for all our future videos and updates.

Bitcoin Lightning Network growth is organic, coming from real-world adoption

Bitcoin Lightning Network adoption receives a boost with the launch of U.S. dollar payments and the decentralized social media platform Nostr.

The capacity of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN) recently surpassed an all-time high of 5,000 Bitcoin (BTC). 

The Lightning Network is a neutral protocol built on top of Bitcoin, and it currently does not have a “native” token attached to it like many decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.

Although the Lightning Network’s total liquidity is less than 0.5% of the Ether (ETH) in DeFi contracts, the uptrend in Bitcoin’s LN capacity versus a downtrend in the amount of ETH locked in smart contracts is encouraging for LN development.

Total ETH locked in DeFi contracts (top) and total BTC in LN channels (bottom). Source: DefiLlama

While the liquidity on the LN has been rising consistently, the number of channels on the peer-to-peer network dropped drastically in November following the FTX collapse. It could be due to an exodus of miners operating LN nodes besides running mining clients.

However, the likely end of miner capitulation and the rise of Bitcoin-based applications like nonfungible tokens could mark an end to LN channel capitulation. Since the start of 2023, over 2,000 new channels have been added to the network.

Lightning Network number of channels. Source: Glassnode

A Valkyrie Investments report states that LN adoption is picking up speed in emerging markets like South America and Africa, primarily due to efforts of the LN mobile payment application Strike.

In December 2022, the firm launched an LN-based remittance service in Africa. The service offers no-cost transfers from the United States to Africans in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. Later, Strike announced a similar program in the Philippines.

LN capacity and important chronological events. Source: Valkyrie

More recently, the firm announced dollar payments using LN, where users can potentially send dollars from the Strike’s cash balance to savings and Visa-enabled accounts. The app will convert U.S. dollars to BTC in the background and convert to dollars at the destination. Since LN is fast and cheap, the risk due to Bitcoin’s price volatility is minimal.

The cost of international payments from the U.S. can reach as high as $45 per transaction, with transfers taking hours or sometimes days. Thus, users may start preferring Strike-based payments over traditional remittance channels.

A recent report from Marty Bent found that the LN payments have risen this year on one of the top Lightning Network wallets, Wallet of Satoshi. Moreover, Podcasting 2.0 — a podcasting platform that accepts LN payments — also recorded an uptick in tips sent to creators.

Related: Retail giant Pick n Pay to accept Bitcoin in 1,628 stores across South Africa

Nostr is boosting LN adoption

Another factor influencing the adoption of LN is the launch of Nostr. According to the protocol’s GitHub page, Nostr is a simple, open protocol that enables global, decentralized, censorship-resistant social media. The protocol allows social media applications to be built on it.

Damus, a Twitter competitor, is built on Nostr and has an iOS and Android application. The idea of an open, free social media network reverberates strongly in the crypto space, with Bitcoin pioneers like Jack Dorsey and Adam Back having strongly endorsed Nostr.

Besides their similarities in ideology, Nostr can boost LN adoption, as Damus has integrated various LN wallets like Wallet of Satoshi, Strike, BlueWallet and others. According to a report from LN analyst Kevin Rooke, over 600,000 users have signed up for Nostr. This could help onboard users to LN, as Nostr supports the Bitcoin payment network through Nostr Zap.

While the LN does not have a native token, there is a potential for LN nodes to earn fees for facilitating transactions and providing liquidity. However, in its current state, the earnings are negligible. Hence, the Lightning Network’s growth appears to be organic, and it’s well-positioned to become the leading global payment network — as prominent personalities in the space have predicted.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Beware of Bing AI chat and ChatGPT pump-and-dump tokens — Watch The Market Report live

On this week’s episode of The Market Report, Cointelegraph’s resident experts discuss ChatGPT pump-and-dump tokens and why you should be cautious.

This week on The Market Report, the resident experts at Cointelegraph discuss dozens of pump-and-dump tokens purporting to be related to ChatGPT and Bing AI chat.

We will be doing things a little differently this week since our handsome and charming host, Joe Hall, will be somewhere over the Atlantic during the livestream and will not be able to join us. Not to worry, though, as our resident experts Marcel Pechman and Sam Bourgi are here, as always, to break down the latest news in the markets.

Bitcoin bulls ignore recent regulatory FUD by aiming to flip $25K to support

The New York State Department of Financial Services ordered Paxos to “cease minting” the Paxos-issued Binance USD (BUSD) dollar-pegged stablecoin. On Feb. 16, a bank account controlled by Binance.US moved over $400 million to the trading firm Merit Peak, which is supposedly an independent entity also controlled by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. This and other bad news in the crypto market have not seemed to deter Bitcoin (BTC) from gaining 15% since Feb. 13. In fact, both retail and pro traders are showing signs of confidence. We explain why that is the case and why the odds favor a continuation of the current rally.

BingChatGPT ‘pump-and-dump’ tokens emerging by the dozen: PeckShield

Blockchain security firm PeckShield has raised the alarm after finding dozens of tokens purporting to be related to artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot ChatGPT. Some of these tokens have already lost most of their value, if not all, in what is often referred to as a “pump-and-dump” scheme or a “rug pull.” A pump-and-dump scheme typically involves the creators orchestrating a campaign of misleading statements and hype to persuade investors into purchasing tokens, then secretly selling their stake in the scheme when prices go up. You might think it interesting to check out a token supposedly related to the recent hype involving Bing AI chat and ChatGPT, but we’re here to tell you to be cautious when getting financially involved with any of them. We also explain some basic ways you can keep yourself safe from such scams.

Bitcoin active addresses ‘concern’ analyst despite 50% BTC price gains

Bitcoin still lacks the on-chain volume and active address increases that characterize bull markets, research warns. In a frank appraisal of the 2023 BTC price rebound, on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant warned that Bitcoin might be weaker than it seems. Many analysts seem to be very suspicious about the recent bullish trend in the market, and we’re here to explain why.

Our experts cover these and other developing stories, so make sure you tune in to stay up-to-date on the latest in the world of crypto.

Do you have a question about a coin or topic not covered here? Don’t worry — join the YouTube chat room and write your questions there. The person with the most interesting comment or question will have a chance to win a one-month subscription to Markets Pro worth $100.

The Market Report streams live every Tuesday at 12:00 pm ET (5:00 pm UTC), so be sure to head on over to the Cointelegraph Markets & Research YouTube page and smash those Like and Subscribe buttons for all our future videos and updates.

$24K Bitcoin — Is it time to buy BTC and altcoins? Watch Market Talks live

Join us as we discuss whether it’s time to consider stacking some sats and buying into some attractive altcoins.

In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Michaël van de Poppe, a full-time day/swing trader in cryptocurrencies based at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange who’s interested in everything related to blockchain in combination with the current financial system. He is also the CEO and founder of Eight Global, a cryptocurrency education and consultancy platform.

We kick things off by getting van de Poppe’s take on the current market and how he’s feeling about things at the moment. 

Generally, everyone’s views on external macro factors that impact crypto prices are mostly United States-centric. Since van de Poppe is based in Amsterdam, we find out what other macro and geopolitical factors he regularly considers when assessing the markets.

After the news about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cracking down on stablecoins and exchanges and also the not-so-hot Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, Bitcoin (BTC) made a move that was opposite to what many market participants were expecting. Van de Poppe shares hi thoughts and reasoning for this. 

We get into the nitty-gritty about van de Poppe’s approach to investing in altcoins and how the two large-cap cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ether (ETH), impact his decisions, if at all. 

The Ethereum Shanghai upgrade is on everyone’s minds, and everyone has their own thesis on what will happen once the upgrade is complete. We ask van de Poppe what his play on Ether is over the next six months and how he plans on trading the upgrade.

One major topic that seems to generate a lot of debate in the crypto space is whether or not the current bullish price action has a limited shelf life or if it’s here to stay and will continue. We get the professional’s take on the matter and also how he thinks 2023 is going to play out for the global markets and U.S. stock markets.

We cover all this and more, so be sure to tune in live by clicking here.

Make sure to stay tuned until the end because Cointelegraph Markets & Research will also be taking your questions and comments throughout the show, so be sure to have them ready to go.

Market Talks streams live every Thursday at 12:00 pm ET (5:00 pm UTC). Each week, it features interviews with some of the most influential and inspiring people from the crypto and blockchain industry. So, be sure to head on over to Cointelegraph Markets & Research’s YouTube page and smash those Like and Subscribe buttons for all our future videos and updates.

Ethereum NFT collections lost nearly 60% of their market cap in 2022: Report

NFTs, like the rest of crypto, felt the influence of bad actors and market manipulators in 2022. Those launched after the start of the crypto winter did better.

A survey of 81 nonfungible token (NFT) collections on the Ethereum blockchain showed a sharp overall loss in market capitalization in 2022, according to a report from DappRadar released Feb. 9. Losses were not evenly distributed, however.

The Ethereum NFT market was worth $9.3 billion at the beginning of 2022, according to DappRadar’s valuation, and that figure dropped to $3.7 billion by year-end — a loss of 59.6%. The price of Ether (ETH) impacted the valuations:

“It is also important to consider that ETH lost 60% of its value last year, which had a strong influence on the value of the NFTs.”

The NFT market peaked in February 2022 at $19.1 billion, outperforming Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether until the Terra collapse in May. By the following month, NFTs had lost 88% of their value. The market hit its year low at $2.2 billion at the end of November, the month of the FTX collapse. The market finished the year up 68% from that low. The report notes:

“This retraction of the NFT market was not a reflection of NFT’s utility, but rather a result of bad actors and market manipulations.”

Yuga Labs accounted for two-thirds of the market in 2022, with its CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club collections holding 46.7% of the market by themselves. The Otherdeed collection was Yuga Labs’ loss leader, falling 86.15%.

Related: Should Bored Ape buyers be legally entitled to refunds?

The Azuki, Pudgy Penguins and Degen Toonz collections were the only ones “launched in 2021 or early 2022 to experience significant market cap growth,” rising 113.89%, 260% and 204%, respectively.

NFT collections launched after the Terra collapse fared better. The report cites Potatoz (+134.68%), Renga (+211.63%), DigiDaigaku (+209.88%) and God Hates NFTees (+1,653.28%) as examples.

The report also traced the declining share of collectibles in the NFT market share. Collectibles started 2022 with over 90% of the market but held well below 75% of it in January 2023. Trading volume for NFTs in January 2023 amounted to $870 million.


Why are artificial intelligence tokens going parabolic? Watch Market Talks live

Join us as we discuss the reasons behind the recent price rally of artificial intelligence tokens.

In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Average Joe’s Crypto, a research analyst and writer. He authors his own blog, which focuses on all things crypto, Web3 and decentralized finance (DeFi).

Without wasting any time, we jump straight into why artificial intelligence (AI) tokens have been going parabolic recently. Why have tokens that use artificial intelligence in some way been having their moment in the sun, and is this a trend that will continue into the future or is it just a passing fad? 

There have recently been a number of memecoins that have been moving upw, too. We get into why this is the case and which memecoins you should be keeping an eye on.

There has been a sense of newfound euphoria in the market since we’ve seen consecutive green candles across the board. This has also brought out a lot of influencers spamming Twitter with low-cap coins that are performing surprisingly well, but what should you make of this current sentiment, and will it be short-lived?

For some people in the crypto space, it’s difficult to detach themselves from everything happening in the market and take a step back to look at events that are taking place outside of crypto. We take a look at what some of these events might be and if you should be paying attention to them.

Even though the first month of 2023 is over, there is still a lot this year could have to offer. We take a look at some predictions for the year and rate their outcome on a “low, medium and high” scale to work out the probability of each prediction coming to fruition. One of the major events for this year is the staked Ether unlock. We discuss how it will play out and who is positioned well to benefit in the Ether (ETH) liquid-staked derivatives market.

Make sure to stay tuned until the end to get all of these insights and more. Cointelegraph will also be taking your questions and comments throughout the show, so be sure to have them ready to go.

Market Talks streams live every Thursday at 12:00 pm ET (5:00 pm UTC). Each week, it features interviews with some of the most influential and inspiring people from the crypto and blockchain industry. So, be sure to head on over to Cointelegraph’s YouTube page and smash those Like and Subscribe buttons for all our future videos and updates.