Discover the latest market insights and trends in CMC’s Monthly Report, which covers the crypto market overview, DeFi, NFTs, stablecoins, VC fundraising and more.
Market Overview
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Total Crypto Market Cap
Total Crypto Mcap Gained 19% in October as BTC Touches $35K
October has been an exceptionally positive month for crypto, with total crypto market capitalization increasing 19.0% from $1.08T to $1.28T. This is the second highest monthly return for total crypto MCAP, besides the 31.6% gain in January 2023.
CMC Crypto Fear & Greed Index
CMC’s Fear & Greed Index Moved from Neutral to Greed
This was reflected in CMC’s Fear and Greed index, which showed an increase from Neutral territory (42.16) to Greed (71.86). The bullishness was largely driven by investors' optimism for the imminent approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), despite the misreported approval of BlackRock’s ETF application. Bloomberg ETF analysts have raised the odds of approval to 75% this year, and 95% in 2024.
Liquidity
Total Crypto Trade Volume Surged to Nearly $100B
The liquidity in the market has spiked towards the last week of October. Bitcoin rallied to $35,000 for the first time since May 2022, as investors’ optimism returned to the market. This has resulted in a surge of trading volume, touching almost $100B. This likely signifies greater speculative interest in the market, with Bitcoin’s bullish price performance possibly cascading down to other altcoins.
Derivatives
BTC Open Interest Up 28% in October
Source: Glassnode
Funding Rates Turned Positive, Indicating Strong Bullish Sentiment
Source: Glassnode
The Futures Funding Rate rate has significantly turned positive towards the end of October, indicating a strong bullish sentiment in the market. The current rates range from 0.05% to 0.1%, indicating a higher level of long leverage, which suggests a short-term market top.
Top Performers in October 2023 (Top 100 Coins)
Injective Leads Top Gainers in Large Caps
Injective (INJ) is the top performer within the CMC Top 100 ranked cryptocurrencies. This was largely driven by positive developments within the ecosystem, such as the integration with leading institutional custodian BitGo, and the launch of the Google-cloud backed hackathon. INJ is one of the strongest performers within the large caps in 2023, gaining over 952% year-to-date.
Other notable performers include Neo (NEO), which announced it is developing an EVM-compatible, MEV-free sidechain, and Solana (SOL), which rallied on the back of buying pressure on Coinbase and bullishness from institutional investors like VanEck. This is despite the FTX estate holding $1.162B in SOL.
Stablecoin Flows
USDT Market Cap Reached All Time High
USDT Extends Market Share to Almost 69%
As the market rebounded, stablecoin flows into the crypto market increased. Total stablecoin market capitalization gained 0.82% to reach $123B.
Some analysts believe that the decline in stablecoins market cap has bottomed out, with more inflows in stablecoins likely to enter the market, reflecting a bullish outlook by investors.
However, a caveat to note is that this gain is mostly in Tether (USDT), which reached an all-time-high in market capitalization of $85.46B. USDT extended its market share from 68.2% to 68.9%, whereas other stablecoins like USDC, DAI and TUSD declined or remained unchanged.
DeFi
Total Value Locked on DeFi Grows 9.3%
Total DeFi TVL experienced a growth of $3.56B in TVL, a MoM growth of 9.30%. This is likely attributed to the increase in Bitcoin’s price, which pushed the overall crypto market up and boosted TVL of the entire DeFi ecosystem.
JustLend TVL Surpasses Aave and Maker
- Looking at the absolute value of TVL gainers, blue-chip protocols seem to gain the most momentum this month
- JustLend, the biggest lending protocol on Justin Sun-backed Tron, gained 25.4% and surpassed both Aave and Maker to take the top spot with the highest TVL
- Uniswap’s TVL slightly declined following the announcement of their new 0.15% frontend fee, but remains the leading DEX on Ethereum with TVL gaining 6.89%
- TVL on Maker rebounded despite the outflow in September due to a decline in the Dai Savings Rate (DSR) from 8% to 5%
Layer 1 & Layer 2 Overview
State of the L1s
Wemix, Gnosis Leads in MCAP Gain and TVL
Wemix (WEMIX) leads in top market cap gainer (92.5%). Wemix is a gaming-focused blockchain developed by Korean gaming company Wemade, which announced a partnership with Chainlink to develop cross-chain web3 gaming use-cases in October.
Gnosis (GNO) is the largest TVL gainer, likely due to the deployment of blue-chip DeFi protocols like Aave, Balancer, Curve and Maker. Gnosis is an EVM-compatible chain developed by the GnosisDAO.
State of the L2s
Arbitrum Extends TVL Lead Following Odyssey and Orbit Launch
Layer-2s blockchains experienced a slight increase in TVL, increasing $33 million to over $3.08 billion, a 1.03% increase MoM. This is the 2nd consecutive month that L2s experienced a TVL growth, a result of increased speculative interest in the market.
Notably, Arbitrum (ARB) extended its dominance as the leading L2 in terms of TVL. Arbitrum relaunched its Arbitrum Odyssey program on Sept. 27, and introduced Arbitrum Orbit, allowing builders to deploy their own chains on Arbitrum One or Nova.
Base Loses TVL After Strong Start
- The biggest loser in TVL is Base, which is likely due to the dying hype from Friend.Tech, the leading Dapp on Base
- Meanwhile, the biggest gainer in TVL is Mantle (MNT), with an impressive 33% jump in TVL this month, likely attributed to the team’s expanding ecosystem efforts in onboarding new protocols and distribution of incentives to protocols and users.
- Another notable mention is Polygon (MATIC) zkEVM with a growth of 18%, likely attributed to POL token migration
Base Falls to Third, ZkSync Era Overtakes Arbitrum in Transaction Count
- Daily transactions would give a good indication of user activity in the network, since TVL can be distorted by whale activity
- Base had the highest daily transaction peak near 1.5M daily transactions before heading for a steady decline for the rest of october
- Mantle was ahead than Optimism in the first half of October, before slumping below Optimism
- Scroll only launched on 11th Oct, but has experienced high growth of transactions that has overtaken Mantle as well
- Zk-rollup ZkSync Era overtakes leading optimistic-based L2 Arbitrum
NFT Market Update
NFT Marketplace Trade Volumes Gain 87%
Source: Dune
The Captainz Leads in Sales Volume
Source: NFTGo
In October, the NFT market saw a positive shift, trading volume surged by 87% in the month of October.Key Highlights from Prominent NFT Collections
- Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) saw a 53% increase in sales volume, reaching $54 million, and a 46% rise in unique traders. BAYC now accounts for c.21.63% of the total trade volume.
- The Captainz experienced the most significant growth, with a 140% surge in sales volume from $2.8 million to $6.8 million.
- Pudgy Penguins and CryptoPunks also saw notable increases of 63% and 45%.
- Sorare and Azuki faced losses of 53% and 20% in trading volume.
VC Fundraising Analysis
According to CryptoRank, $428.16 million were invested by crypto VCs in October, a MoM decrease of 23.94%. The YTD cumulative fundraising is ~$7.18 billion, a 81.9% decrease to the $39.67 billion raised in the same period last year.
Looking at the breakdown of VC investments, Series A and earlier seems to remain the more preferred stages of investment this month, which is similar to the pattern of investments YTD.
Breaking down the fundraising by category, we see that Blockchain Service was the most heavily invested category, followed by DeFi. This reflects the general trend so far this year. GameFi has overtaken Social for October.
BlockAid
Investors: Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Variant, Greylock Partners and Cyberstarts
Blockaid is a Web3 security tool that tries to stop malicious transactions before they happen, protecting web3 users from scams, phishing, and hacks.
Blackbird
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), Union Square Ventures, Variant, Amex Ventures, QED Investors, Shine Capital
Blackbird is a decentralized platform built for the hospitality industry that helps facilitate instant and direct connectivity between restaurants and their guests.
SynFutures
Investors: Panterra Capital, Hashkey Capital, Susquehanna International Group
SynFutures is a permissionless perpetuals and futures trading platform that offers an endless array of assets while allowing easy and efficient free listing of new trading pairs.
Membrane Labs
Investors: Framework Ventures, Jump Crypto, Electric Capital, Jane Street Capital, GSR, QCP Capital, Brevan Howard Digital, Flow Traders, Point72 Ventures, Belvedere Trading, Two Sigma Ventures
Membrane Labs is a modular enterprise-grade software built for the management and settlement of digital assets. It provides core netting and settlement infrastructure for institutional digital asset trading.
Shrapnel
Investors: Polychain Capital, IOSG, Tess Ventures, Franklin Templeton Investments, Griffin Gaming Partners, Brevan Howard Digital
Shrapnel is the world’s first blockchain-enabled first-person shooter (FPS) game, built on Avalanche.
SmlXL
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), Greylock Partners
SmIXL is building a service for the rigorous analysis of EVM bytecode and contracts to provide a comprehensive and rich understanding of accounts and contracts.
Forge
Investors: HashKey Capital, Animoca Brands, Bitkraft Ventures, Polygon Fund, Makers Fund, Formless Capital, Adaverse
Forge offers a platform for gamers to create profiles that can connect their fragmented gaming history together, to build their gaming identity.
Nocturne
Investors: Polychain Capital, Vitalik Buterin, Bain Capital Crypto, Robot Ventures, Hack VC, Bankless
Nocturne is a protocol enabling private accounts on Ethereum by allowing users to deposit or receive funds to private, stealth addresses within Nocturne.
Neutral
Investors: Digital Currency Group (DCG), Rarestone Capital, North Island Ventures, Cerulean Ventures, Redalpine Capital, Very Early Ventures, Factor Capital
Neutral is an exchange designed for environmental assets. It combines tokenized carbon credits, renewable energy credits, and carbon forwards with specialized market infrastructure.
Phaver
Investors: Polygon Fund, SwissBorg Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Alphanonce, Dao5, Nomad Capital, F.Actor, Superhero Capital, Symbolic Capital
Phaver is a Web3 social app purpose-built for the permissionless and non-custodial ecosystem that supports social graphs such as Lens protocol and CyberConnect with other various on-chain assets..
Ton
Investors: MEXC
The Open Network (TON) is a decentralized and open internet platform made up of several components such as TON Blockchain, TON DNS, TON Storage, and TON Sites.
Fairblock
Investors: Reverie, GSR, Lemniscap, Robot Ventures, Dialectic Capital, Chorus One, Galileo, DoraHacks
Fairblock is building infrastructure that enables pre-execution privacy through encryption with and conditional rule-based decryption and execution.
Ostium Labs
Investors: Balaji Srinivasan, Susquehanna International Group, General Catalyst, LocalGlobe
Ostium is the first decentralized perpetuals DEX purpose-engineered for Real World Assets, initially starting with commodities and FX.
MyShell
Investors: HashKey Capital, Signum Capital, SevenX Ventures, Folius Ventures, OP Crypto, INCE Capital, TSVCap, Incubate Fund
MyShell is a platform that contains cutting-edge AI technology modules, where users can create their own AI-native applications or discover the most advanced and convenient AI products.
Squads
Investors: Multicoin Capital, Delphi Digital, Solana Ventures, Jump Crypto, 6th Man Ventures, Placeholder Ventures, L1 Digital, Everstake, Layer One Ventures
Squads helps to simplify the management of developer and treasury assets for on-chain organizations.
Noble
Investors: Polychain Capital, Circle, Wintermute, Borderless Capital, Hustle Fund, CMCC Global, Interop, Wormhole
Noble is an app-chain purpose-built for native asset issuance in Cosmos within the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) ecosystem.
Trending Topics of October
SBF Trial - The Highly Anticipated Verdict
After a month of testimonies and presentation of extensive evidence, the criminal trial of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has finally concluded. On Nov. 2, the 12-person jury found SBF guilty on all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy charges related to the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX in November 2022.
Key witnesses testified over nearly 5 weeks of proceedings. Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison admitted to improperly withdrawing FTX customer funds to cover losses at Alameda against company policy. FTX co-founder Gary Wang testified that Alameda had special withdrawal privileges allowing unlimited access to client deposits.
SBF took the stand in his own defense. He maintained that he never intended to commit fraud, portraying the FTX collapse as a result of poor management and market volatility.
The jury ultimately found the evidence against SBF overwhelming, deliberating for 4 hours before returning unanimous guilty verdicts on all 7 counts. He was convicted of two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, two counts of wire fraud, one count of commodities fraud conspiracy, one count of securities fraud, and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
SBF now faces up to 115 years in prison and will be sentenced by New York District Judge Lewis Kaplan on March 28, 2024.
Bitcoin and Ethereum Spot ETF Anticipation
The potential approval of the first Bitcoin and Ethereum spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. has been highly anticipated in the crypto industry. While futures ETFs are already trading on exchanges, no spot ETFs have yet been approved despite many recent filings.
Key dates to monitor are:
- 21Shares & ARK’s deadline: Jan. 10, 2024
- BlackRock’s deadline: March 15, 2024
- Fidelity’s deadline: March 15, 2024
- Valkyrie’s deadline: March 19, 2024
Other firms like Grayscale, Bitwise, VanEck, Wisdomtree, Invesco & Galaxy, Global X, Hashdex and Franklin have also filed spot ETF applications.
According to a recent report by analysts at JPMorgan, approvals could come within months. Bloomberg senior analyst Eric Balchunas places the odds of approval at 75% this year and 95% by the end of 2024.
While the exact impact on crypto prices is speculative, most believe these regulated vehicles would significantly legitimize digital assets and open the floodgates to institutional capital like hedge funds and pension funds.
New CoinMarketCap Products
CMC Labs, An Intensive Web3 Startup Accelerator
CoinMarketCap has launched CMC Labs, a one-year startup accelerator program designed to empower the next generation of Web3 founders. CMC Labs aims to provide founders with CoinMarketCap's crypto market intelligence and expertise, as well as exposure to over 3.4 million monthly visitors.
With strategic insights drawn from CMC's extensive database of over 2 million tracked cryptocurrencies and 650+ exchanges, participants will learn to position themselves for success in the rapidly evolving Web3 landscape. CMC Labs startups also gain growth opportunities across CMC's social channels, email subscribers, mobile app and website.
Additional growth levers include educational campaigns, airdrops, professionally produced content, networking with CMC partners like leading blockchain protocols and venture funds, and CMC Live discussions.
CMC Labs is a highly competitive program accepting a limited number of participants. It represents CoinMarketCap's commitment to accelerating crypto adoption by empowering ambitious Web3 entrepreneurs with the platform's industry-leading knowledge and reach.
CMC ChatGPT Plugin
CoinMarketCap has released its ChatGPT plugin to provide users with AI-powered insights and analysis. The plugin allows users to get quick answers to complex crypto questions by prompting ChatGPT to analyze performance correlations, patterns, token metrics and more. It aims to make fetching the latest data and deriving insights more convenient.
Global Charts Page
CoinMarketCap has revamped its Global Charts page, adding several new interactive charts covering both spot and derivatives markets.
The updated page now features enhanced charts for tracking total market capitalization, 24-hour trading volumes, Bitcoin dominance, and CoinMarketCap's Crypto Fear & Greed Index.
New derivatives charts have also been introduced, allowing visitors to monitor open interest, along with Bitcoin and Ethereum options’ volatility.
The new interactive charts are optimized for performance across devices.
Revamped Search Bar Now Covers DEX Pairs, Exchanges and More
CoinMarketCap has expanded the capabilities of its search bar, allowing users to search for crypto assets, DEX pairs, exchanges, community discussions and categories.
The upgraded search aims to provide a seamless experience for users to find desired information. In addition to searching for cryptocurrencies, visitors can now directly look up exchanges, DEX pairs, categories and related topics discussed on CMC community.
By enabling direct lookups beyond just assets, visitors can easily access other integral parts of the crypto ecosystem.
Amazon Partnership
CoinMarketCap has announced the integration of its data into Amazon's Alexa, allowing users to access real-time crypto market data through voice commands. The integration enables Alexa devices to provide pricing, performance metrics and other statistics for thousands of cryptocurrencies.
Users can simply ask Alexa for quick daily market data, coin prices and more. The goal is to offer a more convenient way for investors to stay updated without constantly checking charts and rates.
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