CoinGecko: Crypto market capitalization grew by 65% in the first quarter

What’s new? Crypto market capitalization in the first quarter of this year grew by 64,5% compared to the previous reporting period and reached the $2,9 billion mark on March 13, the highest since November 2021, analysts at the aggregator CoinGecko said in a new report. Also from January through March, the BTC exchange rate added 68,8%, hitting an all-time high of $73 098.

CoinGecko’s report

What else is known? The growth in the value of the first cryptocurrency was facilitated by the approval of spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on it in the United States. The daily trading volume of the asset in the reporting period rose to $34,1 billion, an 89,8% increase compared to the fourth quarter of last year.

Spot bitcoin ETFs accumulated over $55,1 billion worth of coins under management by the second of April. IBIT fund from BlackRock, the world’s largest investment company, accumulated bitcoins worth $17 billion, becoming the second largest BTC ETF after Grayscale’s GBTC, which has been steadily recording outflows. IBIT has also become the leader in trading volume.

BTC volume under GBTC management has fallen by 50% in three months

So far, the fund retains its leading position in terms of the volume of savings

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Spot trading volume on the ten largest centralized exchanges (CEXs) reached $4,29 trillion, the highest since Q4 2021. The year-on-year growth was 95,3%.

At the end of March, Binance remained the largest CEX with a 50% market share, gradually regaining its dominance during the quarter. The platform saw a marked increase in new listings and project launches, analysts said. At the same time, the share of MEXC, known for its wide range of small-cap tokens, declined as traders focused on major cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, and SOL.

KuCoin became the leader in spot trading volume growth in March with a figure of 262%

At the same time, the exchange received a lawsuit from the US authorities in March, after which it faced a significant outflow of funds

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The analysts also analyzed other market segments, including staking and DeFi. They noted the growing popularity of the EigenLayer ETH liquid restaking protocol. The volume of coins blocked in it increased by 36% and reached 4,3 million ETH. In general, more than half of ETH (52,6%) in staking by the end of March were placed in liquid restaking protocols (LRT). The largest of them was Ether.fi with a market share of 21%. In just three months, the volume of blocked coins in it grew by 2616% and reached 910 000 ETH.

At the same time, the share of Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in the total trading volume on DEXs fell to 30%, as other networks, such as Solana, Base, and Arbitrum, attracted more attention due to the launch of incentive initiatives and the growing popularity of meme tokens based on them.

Thus, the top 10 meme tokens on Solana grew in value by an average of 801,5% or $8,32 billion, with their total capitalization reaching $9,36 billion. Of these coins, only BONK and Samoyedcoin (SAMO) were launched earlier than Q4 last year. WIF, launched in November, has already overtaken BONK, and Book Of Memes (BOME), which appeared only on March 14, reached a capitalization of $1 billion in just two days.