One of the standout features of the half year was the fact that while the overall growth to $1.17 trillion, the first and second quarters ended with nearly identical total market capitalization numbers, making the second quarter results look lackluster.
Analyzing the reasons, CoinMarketCap concluded that the results of the second quarter were the result of the absence of significant market drivers capable of influencing market performance compared to the previous reporting period. The first trimester of 2023 saw events such as a doubling of the bitcoin price, the rise of L2s like Arbitrium and ZK, and a revitalization of the NFT market, driven in part by product updates and the release of Blur tokens.
The second quarter saw various speculative trends, such as the “memcoin season”, which did not generate significant investment interest from large capital representatives. Total spot trading volume on the 20 largest crypto exchanges, which peaked in March, fell about 36% from the previous quarter, reaching a near hibernation at $523 billion per month by the end of June.
The CoinMarketCap report noted that despite the challenging macroeconomic conditions market development in the first half of the year, some were able to demonstrate significant year-on-year growth in market capitalization.
For example, VR/AR and Al & Big Data came out on top, posting growth of 704% and 323%. Blue chip define projects and infrastructure, including lending (149%), derivatives (75%), storage (86%) and interoperability (58%) are making a strong comeback.
Analyzing the interest of the global crypto community in different niches, experts concluded that regional and geographical differences were not significant in the first half of 2023.
Bitcoin remains the most popular cryptocurrency across all regions, as it will in the second half of 2022. As bitcoin’s dominance over altcoins increased from 40.09% at the beginning of the year to 50.39% at the end of the first half of 2023, experts expect a similar trend to continue in the near term.
Ether (ETH) remains a popular coin of interest in most regions with the exception of Asia and Africa, while Efirium scaling solutions such as Polygon (MATIC) and Arbitrum (ARB) have conversely attracted the attention of the African and Asian regions.
In terms of the distribution of global traffic from cryptocurrency users, the United States, India, Turkey, Germany, Brazil and Vietnam are leading the way in the first half of 2023. Together, users from the above countries account for about 53% of global traffic. Among all countries in the world, the US (17.4%) dominates.
Earlier, analysts at Chainalysis announced that the amount of assets that cryptocurrency fraudsters and similar criminals were able to get their hands on in the first half of 2023 decreased by 65% compared to January-June 2022.