The sense of collapse that gripped cryptocurrency markets at the end of 2022 after the loss of $1.5 trillion has given way a year later to a feeling of greed, it seems. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, jumped by 160.34% this year to record $43,151.16, at the time of preparing this report, from $16,574.9 at the beginning of January, adding about $525 billion to its market value. .
A number of less valuable cryptocurrencies, from “Solana” backed by Sam Bankman Fried, to “Dogecoin”, which carries the image of a dog as a logo, and “Frog”, which makes the image of a frog a logo, have awakened with investors returning to risk again. The investor who bought at $ $100,000 “Solana” coin at the beginning of 2023 will today receive gains of more than $800,000, according to Bloomberg calculations.
This comes as a result of optimism that US regulatory bodies will permit the establishment of the first exchange-traded fund that invests directly in the Bitcoin currency next month.
MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor expected that US approval to create spot ETFs for Bitcoin would be a major catalyst for a significant increase in demand for it.
It is noteworthy that digital asset markets are still facing criticism that they are basically worthless and are a haven for outlaws, and the Binance platform, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, agreed last November to pay a fine of $4.3 billion to a group of… Violations, CEO Changping Zhao was forced to step down, and Sam Bankman Fried was imprisoned for fraud after the collapse of the FTX exchange, and the cryptocurrency market did not fully recover after this blow.
Bitcoin halving
Bitcoin’s rise this year has outpaced stocks and gold, and supporters of the cryptocurrency expect that its “halving” will limit the growth of its supply, which will be a push for its price, in addition to the potential demand for ETFs (scheduled to be decided in the United States).
The Bitcoin halving is an event in which the reward for mining and verifying new blocks is reduced to 50%. Thus, miners will be able to earn only half the number of Bitcoin tokens per mined block. The halving is scheduled to take place approximately every 4 years, according to the Binance platform.
The dominant cryptocurrency is still trading well below the November 2021 record of about $69,000.
Bitcoin mining companies Marathon Digital Holding, Riot Platform, Coinbase Global, and software company-turned-bitcoin investor MicroStrategy all jumped as cryptocurrency markets recovered. Coinbase’s nearly 400% gain survived a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly… Operating an unregistered platform, an accusation the company denies.
But despite the rise in the price of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency market still shows impact from the collapse of the FTX platform and Almada Research, owned by Sam Bankman Fried, in November 2022.
At the level of trading platforms, there have been major shifts in the market shares of cryptocurrency exchanges this year, but the Binance platform remains the largest despite its share of spot trading declining to about 44% by mid-December from more than 65% at the beginning of 2023. According to Caico, this is due to an increase in the share of Asian-focused platforms such as Abit, Paybit and OKEx.
