Crypto Industry’s First Quarter Report (Q1): Market Cap Surges by 48.9% with Bitcoin and Ethereum Leading the Way

Crypto Industry had a bull ride in the Crypto market in the first quarter of 2023. Last year, 2022 ended with nightmares of FTX collapse and a dull market leaving investors in a dilemma. The 2023 year began with a steady rise, sparking excitement and optimism among investors.

The cryptocurrency industry has seen a massive surge in growth in the first quarter of 2023, with Bitcoin and Ethereum leading the way. This quarterly report provides an overview of key trends in the crypto industry for this quarter, including details on Bitcoin and Ethereum price movements and analysis of other major projects such as DeFi, and NFTs.

According to CoinGecko’s quarterly report,2023, the total market capitalization has seen a whopping 48.9% increase from $831.8B on Jan 1, 2023, to $1.238T on March 31, 2023. Let us analyze the market of cryptocurrencies, DeFi, and NFT along with the centralized and decentralized market for the first quarter. 

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Deep Analysis of the Crypto Industry for Q1

Total Market Capitalization rallied 48.9% in Q1

The crypto market started with a bang in 2023, having ended Q1 with a total crypto market cap of $1.2 trillion. Compared to its performance in 2022 where it closed the year at $829 billion, marking a gain of 48.9% or $406 billion.

The total market cap excluding Bitcoin and including stablecoins and Tokens as of March 31, 2023, was $635,775,552,272.

The dominance of cryptocurrencies by percentage as of March 31, 2023

• Bitcoin: 46.28%
• Ethereum: 18.59%
• Tether: 6.74%
• BNB: 4.23%
• USD: 2.76%
• XRP: 2.33%
• Cardano: 1.20%
• Dogecoin: 0.89%
• Polygon: 0.85%
• Solana: 0.68%
• Others: 15.45%

Bitcoin outshined traditional assets classes, recording a 72% gain

Bitcoin was the best-performing asset in 2023 Q1, registering a gain of 72.4% QoQ, followed by the NASDAQ index (15.7%) and gold (8.4%). In the meantime, crude oil dipped to -17.2 % due to inflation and low oil demand. The US Dollar index remained flat.
The price of Bitcoin opened at $16,547.91 on Jan 1, 2023, with a market cap of $320,025,834,692 and ended the quarter with a whopping $28,478.48 on March 31, 2023, with a Market cap of $550,593,053,897. Bitcoin Mining hash rate increased by 24%.

Ethereum rose as high as $49.8% in this Q1

Ethereum had a strong start with a 49.8% increase. Ethereum began with $1,196.71 on Jan 1, 2023, and ended the quarter with $1822.02. Ethereum trembled a bit at the start of March, however, it recovered and moved toward the profit zone. The collapse of banks in March had a negative impact on the price a bit.

Stablecoins contributed $6.2 billion, with USDC and BUSD being the Top losers

The top 15 stablecoins saw their market cap drop by 4.5% ($6.2 billion) due to the halt of Binance USD (BUSD) and the USD Coin (USDC) depegging during SVB’s collapse. USDT and LUSD gained in this quarter 

Tether, the largest stablecoin, started the year with a market cap of $$66,243,294,943 on Jan 1, 2023, and by the end of the quarter, it had reached $$79,682,243,497. Tether added a total of 20.5 % to its market cap. 

Meanwhile, GUSD and USDP dropped 32.0% and 12.3% respectively.

DeFi ecosystem gained 65.2% by $29.6 billion

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) gained by the performance of liquid staking governance tokens and the latest Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade. The DeFi market has seen a drop in the last few months. The DeFi market was down due to the widely used stablecoin in the DeFi ecosystem, USDC pegged along with the banking industry collapse.

The DeFi tokens have increased from $17.9B to $29.6B. The derivatives, Insurance,  and fixed interest protocols have surged.

However, DeFi’s share raised its momentum and surged again. Despite the market discrepancy, the market cap of DeFi has risen to 50% from $34B to $50B in Q1, 2023.

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) increased by 67.2%

The Market cap of NFTs has soared from $939M in Jan to $1.57B in March quarterly. Ethereum continued to dominate the NFT market where Solana dipped 66% in its volume. The trading volume rose by 68%. Ordinals, a layer 2 network on Bitcoin kept rising with the hype from its launch and mined over 663,000 Bitcoin NFTs in Q1, 2023. 

The majority of market share came from Blur, an NFT platform, dethroning the market leader OpenSea. The market share of Blur is  71.8% wherein the market share of Opensea is 21.7%.

Centralized Exchange (CEX) surged

Binance dominated the CEX market with a share of 62% in March 2023. Meanwhile, the Coinbase exchange experienced a drop of 0.5% in Q1. Top 10 CEX total trading volume increased by 16.9% since Q4 2022.

Decentralized Exchange (DEX) has witnessed a high trend

DEX trading volume increased by 33.4 %, mainly from Uniswap, which contributed 67% of trading volume in Q1 and its market share has risen to 72%. 

Updates on Cryptocurrency Industry in First Quarter

1. On Jan 20, SEC charged Avraham  Eisenberg for stealing $116M of crypto assets by manipulating Mango Markets’ Governance Token (MNGO token).
2. On Jan 31, Ordinals launched NFTs on Bitcoin
3. On Feb 13, Paxos halts BUSD minting
4. On Feb 17, SEC sued Terraform Labs and CEO Do Kwon for orchestrating securities fraud.
5. On March 10, Silicon Valley bank shut down
6. On March 11, the USDC price fell below the $1 peg, and the stablecoin went as low as $0.869.
7. On March 13, the Signature Bank went into FDIC receivership.
8. On March 15, Uniswap v3 launched on BNB Smart Chain (BSC).
9. On March 23, the Ethereum layer 2 solution, Arbitrum (ARB), token Airdrop
10. On March 24, zkSync Era, layer 2 platform launch
11. On March 27, Polygon zkEVM launch
12. On March 28, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sued Binance CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao for “willful evasion”.

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In conclusion, the cryptocurrency Industry quarterly report for 2023 shows that the industry is steadily growing despite a few short-term setbacks. The majority of cryptocurrencies are well-established and have seen significant growth in trading volume, market capitalization, and user numbers over the past year. Furthermore, consumer confidence has been bolstered by increased regulation and the emergence of more stablecoins. With upward trends continuing to dominate the sector, it is likely that growth will remain strong in the coming quarters.