Cryptocurrency aggregator CoinGecko, has just released its much anticipated 2020 Q1 Cryptocurrency Report. In their latest analysis, CoinGecko covered cryptocurrency exchanges, market capitalization, and price changes of certain crypto assets.
Binance Dominates The Space
In CoinGecko’s Q1 Cryptocurrency Report, the team discovered that Binance dominates most metrics available, due to their aggressive growth strategy. Binance Futures overtook BitMEX as the top derivative exchange by Bitcoin Perpetual Swap trading volume. Binance saw its dominance grow significantly from 22.9% to 38% in Q1 2020. As for spot trading, Binance received 50 to 75% of all volume amongst the top 10 real volume exchanges on Bitwise. The platform also dominates web traffic amongst crypto exchanges, with 29% of all web traffic. This traffic is 4 times larger than their nearest competitors.
COVID-19 Panic Hits Crypto Markets
Market capitalization of cryptocurrency markets shrank by 5% in the first quarter of 2020, wiping out all gains made in 2020. This is attributed to what is now known as Black Thursday, whereby the majority of cryptocurrencies fell by over 40% on 12 March. Traditional markets saw huge losses during this period as well.
CoinGecko also answered a couple of interesting questions in their report, such as “Is Bitcoin a safe haven?”. Research from the team discovered that it may not be a safe haven. Bitcoin had a 30-day correlation of 0.9 to the S&P 500. This means that when the S&P 500 declined, so did Bitcoin, though in a more severe manner. When compared to Gold, Bitcoin showed a positive 5-year correlation of 0.6. This may be a reason as to why people believe Bitcoin is a safe haven, similar to Gold.
It was also reported that 54% of crypto users who are familar with DeFi are willing to go completely bankless. This is due to the fact that they don’t trust the banking system. If you would like to learn more about DeFi, check out our article covering CoinGecko’s “How To DeFi” book here. The 2020 Q1 Cryptocurrency Report by CoinGecko is now available publicly, and you can access it here.
