The first quarter of 2024 saw the total crypto market cap gain over $1.1 trillion fueled by the historical approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States.
The cryptocurrency market has consistently remained above $2 trillion in the recent past, led by Bitcoin (BTC) with a market dominance of about 55.65 percent. With less than three days to the fourth Bitcoin halving, overall crypto volatility is expected to remain relatively high. Furthermore, investors taking refuge in the stablecoins market will begin to gradually enter the crypto industry in the subsequent months.
Closer Look at CoinGecko’s Q1 Crypto Report
Most of the crypto assets led by Bitcoin and Ethereum confined a bullish breakout during the first quarter of 2024. According to the Q1 2024 crypto report by CoinGecko, a leading cryptocurrency data aggregator with over 13k different digital assets, the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States was the main event in the industry.
Furthermore, it helped increase the overall valuation to as high as $2.9 trillion in March but has since stabilized around $2.4 trillion. The report noted the iShares Bitcoin Trust (Cboe BZX: IBIT) by BlackRock Inc (NYSE: BLK) and Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (Cboe BZX: FBTC) gathered over $55 billion during the first quarter.
By April 2, 2024, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (BTC) (NYSE Arca: GBTC) had recorded a net outflow of about $6.9 billion thus holding around $21 billion in net assets under management. Remarkably. GBTC has remained the leader in US-based spot Bitcoin ETFs despite the high operating fees and departure of early investors.
As the focus shifted to Ethereum and its staking industry during the first quarter, the report noted that 2.28 million Ether, representing 52 percent of restated Ethers, were helped by Liquid Restaking Protocols (LRTs). Out of which, EtherFi protocol managed the lion’s share of LRTs, representing about 21 percent.
During the first quarter, the Solana (SOL) network recorded major growth fueled by its meme coin frenzy. By the end of the first quarter, the top ten Solana-based meme coins were valued at about $9.36 billion.
However, the Solana ecosystem has since struggled to maintain the meme coin dominance due to network congestion leading to unprocessed transactions. Nonetheless, as Coinspeaker reported, Solana developers are working on a solution to the network congestion.
Trading Volumes
As for the Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) trading volume, the report noted that the Magic Eden platform dominated the industry during the first quarter, with a 27 percent market share. Remarkably, the crypto spot trading volume on centralized exchanges reached $4.29 trillion, which is the highest since the fourth quarter of 2021.
Meanwhile, Ethereum’s trading volume in major decentralized exchanges dropped below 40 percent following heightened competition from other layer-one chains like Solana (SOL) and Toncoin (TON).
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