From July through September, the crypto market’s capitalisation fell by 10%, but year to date it rose 35%. NFT trading volume fell by 55.6%, as did overall interest in the segment. This was reported by CoinGecko analysts in the quarterly report.
Market capitalisation
Over the past three months, about $119 billion left the industry. From the April 17 local peak, the overall capitalisation of the cryptocurrency market fell by 16.3%.
According to analysts, the sharp drop on August 17 split the relatively slow third quarter into two parts. In a single day, Bitcoin’s price fell from $28,000 to $25,000 due to “limited liquidity on crypto exchanges.” As a result, the total market size of digital assets declined from $1.2 trillion to $1.1 trillion.
«Even though there were no major news that day, it seemed traders had pulled back activity for the rest of the summer,» CoinGecko notes.
Trading volumes continued to edge lower after the sharp fall at the end of March. The average daily figure for the period stood at $39.1 billion, 11.5% lower than the previous quarter.
The top-7 dominating coins remained unchanged: Bitcoin (47%), ETH (18%), USDT (7.5%), BNB (3%), Ripple (2.5%), USDC (2.2%), Solana (0.8%).
Stablecoins
The market capitalisation of the 15 largest stablecoins also fell in Q3 — by 3.8%, to $121.3 billion.
The leader USDT was little changed, but its share of the sector rose by 2.6%.
USDC fell by $2.26 billion (8.3%), and BUSD saw the largest drop of $1.87 billion (45.3%). The sharp contraction is linked to the planned for 2024 cessation of support for the asset.
The only stablecoin among the top five that increased its capitalisation was TrueUSD (TUSD) — $39 million (12.8%).
Among other notable newcomers cited by CoinGecko:
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- PYUSD from PayPal — up 113.2% or $50.1 million;
- First Digital USD (FDUSD) — up 55.8% or $15 million;
- crvUSD (CRVUSD) — up 1.8% or $2.2 million.
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Real World Assets
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Tokenised Treasuries became the largest source of growth for RWA in 2023. The asset class’ market capitalisation grew from $114 million in January to $665 million by the end of September.
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In the sector, Franklin Templeton leads with 46.6% of the market, followed by Ondo Finance with 26.8%. New projects Backed Finance and OpenEden ended the previous month with shares of 7.11% and 1.73% respectively.
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The majority of RWA protocols (49%) are based on Ethereum, with the Franklin Templeton network Stellar occupying second place (48%).
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Non-fungible tokens
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NFT trading volumes in Q3 fell 55.6% — from $3.67 billion to $1.63 billion.
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Ethereum maintained dominance (83.2%) of the NFT market. Meanwhile Bitcoin managed to capture 5.6% of the sector. Its share fell from the May peak and has only modestly recovered by September.
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The quarter just ended proved positive for the ImmutableX platform — average monthly trading volume exceeded $20 million. Its market share rose to 3.9%. Analysts link the growth to the appearance of the Web3 game Gods Unchained in the Epic Games Store.
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CEX and DEX
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Spot trading volume on the 10 largest centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEX) for July-September stood at $1.12 trillion, down 20.1%.
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«This was a turbulent quarter for CEX. Binance faced mounting regulatory pressure and exited several jurisdictions, and some of its top managers left the company,» researchers note.
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HTX (formerly Huobi) returned to the top 10, taking third place and ending September with an 8% market share. At the same time KuCoin dropped out of the top ten.
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Spot metrics are not encouraging for decentralised exchanges (DEX) either — a fall of 31.2%, to $105 billion.
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THORchain posted the largest gain, up 113% or $1.27 billion. Analysts partly attribute this to illicit transfers through the network. Although the platform ended the quarter with a 3% share, in early October developers had to restrict operations due to a surge of potential criminals.
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Launched in 2020, the DEX SushiSwap fell out of the leader board, with Orca Finance taking its place at a 1% market share.
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In October, Glassnode analysts noted a contraction in market liquidity amid cycle-low on-chain transfers, changes in exchange balances and capital flows. Experts say there is a mood of apathy, with holding remaining the dominant strategy.
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