CCData's weekly ‘Chart of the Week’ highlights topical digital asset developments with vital commentary and analysis.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we take a closer look at Sui (SUI), which has experienced a notable rise in open interest across several major exchanges, indicating increased investor activity.
As of October 7th, 2024, exchanges such as Binance, Bitget, Bybit, Kraken, and OKX reported over $508 million in open interest for SUI, underscoring its increasing prominence in the market.
This surge coincides with the recent announcement that Circle’s USDC stablecoin will be launched on the Sui network, boosting market confidence and market participation
Since the start of 2024, SUI’s open interest has surged by an impressive 495%, outpacing many other major assets such as BNB and DOGE.
This growth has positioned SUI among the top five assets by open interest, reaching $508 million, just behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP.
Additionally, SUI has posted ~11% month-to-date (MTD) returns and ~150% year-to-date (YTD).
This week’s Chart of the Week highlights May’s correlation of daily returns between BTC, ETH and the SP500, falling to 15.8% and 18.2%, respectively, the lowest level since August 2022.
Digital assets have benefitted from a significant price appreciation following signs that tight monetary policy and high interest rates may soon reach their peak. This comes after the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, causing a stir in the banking system, and amplifying the interest in digital assets.
The depegging of USDC and regulatory issues with BUSD has led to Binance converting $1 billion of their Industry Recovery Initiative funds to BTC, ETH, and BNB, triggering further buy pressure for digital assets.
In this week's COTW, we analyse the quarterly performance of Bitcoin since 2014. Bitcoin ended Q3 with a modest gain of 1.00%, bouncing back significantly after dipping below $50k in August.
As we move into Q4, market sentiment has turned bullish, with this quarter historically averaging a strong return of 49.9% since 2014—the highest of any quarter.
This optimism aligns with a shift in market dynamics following last month’s Federal Reserve interest rate cut, along with upcoming catalysts like the US Presidential election in November.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examined the cumulative trading volumes of centralised exchanges (CEXs).
This month, Binance became the first centralised exchange to surpass $100 trillion in combined spot and derivatives volume, marking a significant historical milestone.
OKX follows Binance with a lifetime trading volume of $25 trillion, while Bybit, Bitget, and HTX rank next among the largest exchanges.
Notably, despite ceasing operations in November 2022, FTX still holds the position of the sixth-largest exchange in terms of all-time volume.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we analysed the fluctuations in BTC Open Interest following the FOMC meeting.
Yesterday, Bitcoin's aggregated open interest jumped 6% to nearly $27 billion after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 50 basis points.
The rate cut sparked increased trading activity, with Bitcoin's price rising above $62,000, reflecting a strong bullish response, which also saw altcoins perform considerably well, especially compared with US equities which experienced whipsaw price action.
This outperformance in the crypto market may underscore the belief that liquidity injections may follow as a result of the aggressive 50bp rate cut, which typically signals some macroeconomic weakness following the stringent multi-year rate hike cycle which depressed some areas of the economy.
If stimulation is required, risk-on assets will respond most sensitively, with an expectation of upward momentum.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we examine the impact of the recent presidential debate on crypto liquidity. Despite the potential for political events to cause market uncertainty, our data shows that liquidity levels for BTC/USDT remained stable throughout the debate.
In part, this is likely due to the fact that crypto and digital assets were absent from the discussion, with no significant shifts in the macroeconomic or regulatory outlook for the sector.
This lack of discourse likely contributed to the muted market reaction, contrasting with previous political events that have triggered sharper fluctuations. For example, the Trump-Biden debate led to more noticeable fluctuations in liquidity.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we analyse Bitcoin's performance and volatility from September 2010 to 2023.
While history doesn’t repeat itself, September has consistently been one of the worst months for Bitcoin in terms of price performance, with only six positive Septembers recorded in the asset's history.
Since 2010, Bitcoin's average returns in September has averaged -4.51%, making it the worst-performing month on record.
In contrast, April and November typically show the highest average returns, followed closely by October - with returns of 35.6%, 39.2% and 28.7%, respectively.
Since 2017, September has reliably brought negative returns for Bitcoin, with particularly steep declines in 2019 (-13.60%) and 2014 (-19.40%). However, 2023 has bucked this trend with a modest return of 4.00%. Despite these returns, Bitcoin's annualised volatility in September isn't notably high compared to other months, averaging around 79.2%.
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