The Fintech Advisory Services monthly report details the main crypto-metrics and indicators for the past month: News, Market Performance, Networks, Mining Activity, Public Sentiment and Academic Publications. The report also covers the latest “Hot Topics” in the crypto space. This month: Facebook’s Libra, Telegram’s TON, China’s CBDC and quantum computing.
This October, the top crypto performers were Chainlink, Bitcoin SV and Ontology, with trading turnovers (i.e. average daily trading volume divided by circulating supply) at 1.51%, 1.47%, and 1.44% respectively. Wealth distribution among main addresses remained heavily centralized, driven by top exchanges’ cold wallets, among other factors. Daily average volatility remained quite similar for the Top 25 cryptocurrencies in comparison to volatility in the previous month, with 2.7% in October compared to 2.8% in September. Average daily trading volume of Bitcoin (BTC) was highest in Tether (USDT), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC), at 122%, 44.2% and 15.3% respectively.
Interest in cryptocurrencies is still high in countries with instability and/or relatively high inflation/interest rates (i.e. Nigeria, Ghana, Venezuela). Surprisingly, Hong Kong disappeared from the Top 25 even though its political climate is still quite tense. A peak in Google searches for Bitcoin over the weekend of October 24th matched the sudden bullish rally on Friday night, leading to a dramatic 42% increase in Bitcoin price in just a couple of hours. The rally came after an announcement by Chinese President Xi Jinping on the importance of Blockchain for China on Friday evening (UTC+8). It was eventually leveraged by a short squeeze on futures trading.
See related article: Opinion | Why the Cryptocurrency Exchange Model Is Prime for Disruption
Total hash rate, a good indicator of mining success, increased in the month of October for Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin SV (BSV), Dash (DASH) and Ethereum (ETH), the largest growth of which was 14.31% by BSV. Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC) and Monero (XMR) had a decrease in month-over-month hash rate, with Litecoin dropping the most overall, by 20.54%.
Bitcoin kept its dominance in the overall number of active addresses, though it fell 2.9% in October compared to its numbers in the previous month. Tether (USDT) had the largest drop of 50.3%, while Chainlink (LINK) had the largest growth (35.2%), which correlated with its growth in transactions in Blockchain, where it also scored as a top performer this month.
The best cryptocurrency to stake in October among the Top 25 was Cosmos (ATOM) with a 13% annual return, while Stellar (XML) only provided a 1% annual return. It is important to note that among the Top 25 cryptocurrencies, only 8 can be staked: EOS, TRX, XML, NEO, XTZ, DASH, ATOM and ONT.
