Market Trend｜NFT Sales Spike By 8% After Months Of Declines, Polygon Moves Towards A Hard Fork This Month

The past week has seemingly banished the bear market that has tortured the market throughout 2022, instead introducing an influx of green candlesticks. A majority of the assets within the top one hundred this week have been privy to significant inclines in comparison to previous weeks, allowing them to recuperate value and fight against the resistance that has plagued the market.

As the overarching market sentiment now casts the market in a more positive light, this has brought with it an influx of innovation and development across blockchains, as well as the resurgence of interest in formerly lucrative blockchain sub-industries. However, despite this positive news, American regulatory bodies have come down on a range of international exchanges for the unlawful and illicit offering of unregistered securities, thus furthering discussion surrounding the future of regulation within the wider cryptocurrency market.

The Latest News

NFT Sales Spike By 8% After Months Of Declines

NFTs were perhaps one of the hardest hit industries out of any area of blockchain as the bear market plummeted market valuations, bankrupted companies, and waned interest in more ‘experimental’ areas of this burgeoning technological world. This decline ensued for eight months, with various NFTs formerly worth millions, now worth mere cence, however, this can to a change in late December, with monthly NFT trading volume rising by 13% to a total of $549.5 million.

However, analyst, Thomas Bialek from The Block Research, has attributed this to be ‘most likely a combination of tax loss harvesting and revitalisation of popular narratives around some of the blue-chip PFP projects, most notably Yuga Labs, given their upcoming ‘Trial of Jimmy The Monkey’ event. Provided the latter is the main driver of this influx of interest in the NFT space, this could signal that once again NFTs can regain their Status in both blockchain and the mainstream by sharing their weird and wonderful nature with the world.

An Example Of An NFT (Image Courtesy of Shutterstock)

Polygon Moves Towards A Hard Fork This Month

Developers at Polygon PoS blockchain have recently proposed the launch of a network hard fork on January 17th, with the intention of reducing the impact of transaction fee spikes and chain reorganisations on the Polygon network. In doing so, developers are aspiring to enhance and upgrade the network so that the security of blocks on the sidechain networks can be improved, and to minimise the sporadic and volatile gas fees and use on the network. Additionally, through reorganisation of the chain, Polygon developers hope to better secure the Polygon mainnet from reorganisation, considering the PoS chain’s history of being prone to ‘reorgs’, thus leading to confusion in regard to transaction verification.

If approved by the community, the hard fork will take place later this month as a part of a broader initiative to improve the technical capabilities of the Polygon side chain, including the likes of parallelisation and the Polygon zkEVM.

Polygon Logo (Image Courtesy of Forbes Advisor)

SEC Charges Gemini and Genesis For Unregistered Securities Offerings

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged crypto exchanges, Gemini and Genesis, with unregistered offering and sale of securities to retail investors, some of whom were in the US. In recent years the SEC has begun to crack down on a range of blockchain companies and exchanges due to regulatory violations, particularly in relation to the offering of unregistered securities – with the Ripple vs SEC case as the most notorious example.

This news comes in light of the ongoing public feud between the leadership teams of both Gemini and Genesis after the pair collaboration to offer and sell retail investors securities through a Gemini crypto lending platform. The two corporations parted ways earlier this month following a scandal related to participants in the ‘Gemini Earn’ programme, offered by Genesis via their platform, not being able to access or receive their funds due to claims of ‘insufficient liquidity’ on Genesis’ part, despite them holding over $900 million in investor funds. Tyler Winklevoss, the co-founder of Gemini, stated that he was disappointed in the SEC’s action against Gemini amidst claims that he and other creditors are working to recover funds for Gemini Earn participants.

Gemini (Image Courtesy of MasterTheCrypto)

Current Project Trends

Based on data provided by CoinMarketCap, a majority of the top-gaining projects across the past week have been focused on both GameFi and the Metaverse. With both of these industries having suffered decimating crashes in light of the bear market, this sudden reinvigoration of interest could signal the resurgence of these facets of blockchain. These projects have been privy of inclines of up to 467.56% in the past 24 hours, which likely is due to the growing positive sentiment within the wider blockchain industry.

The Current BTC Trend

The previous week spurred Bitcoin into an unprecedented incline, allowing it to break free from local resistance zones of $16,800 and soar above the $18,000 threshold. Having gained 11.34% this week alone, Bitcoin’s hourly charts have revealed that it has consistently front ran the reported CPI data and has continued to test the upside resistance of $18,238. With the data landing at 6.5% it is anticipated that bulls will have to defend the support zone of $17,609 and continue providing it with the momentum it needs to continue trading between the $18,238 and $18,382 zone, as Bitcoin remains within this threshold could signal that it will soon trade back above $19,000, the next anticipated key resistance zone.

Following this positive movement, Bitcoin’s MVRV (market value to realised value) has significantly increased over the past week. Entering the week at 0.854, BTC’s MVRV was the highest it has been in several weeks, with this then soaring to a high of 0.934 on the 12th. This signals that BTC may finally be moving away from the ‘market bottom’ indication and towards the more stable territory, signalling that the asset is currently moving towards a more realistic and fully realised valuation. Yet, with Bitcoin still trading below its realised value, this signals that Bitcoin could be a worthy investment as it is still far from healthy valuation territory.

Monthly BTC MVRV Data (Data Courtesy of Blockchain.com)

The State Of ETH Gas Fees

As of the 12th of January, there has been a notable decrease in the total volume of gas used across the past week in comparison to the former, with the lowest figure attained on the 12th, totalling 108,298,134,693. The highest figure attained this week was on the 8th, totalling 108,934,894,219, demonstrating a similar total usage to that of the close of 2022. Despite this small change in the volume of gas used, the current volume of gas used appears to be in line with current monthly trends.

As a result, Ethereum gas fee boundaries this week have taken a substantial decline from the week prior. The low gas boundaries were between 11-116 gwei, the average boundaries were between 11-116 gwei, and the high boundaries were between 11-167 gwei – demonstrating a vast disparity in gas fees across the past week.

Across the past 24 hours, the top ‘Gas Guzzlers’ according to Etherscan were Seaport 1.1 (with fees totalling $269,171.70 or 191.41 ETH), Uniswap V3: Router 2 (with fees totalling $312,318.15 or 222.09 ETH), and Uniswap V2: Router 2 (with fees totalling $196,914.53 or 140.03 ETH) – thus demonstrating a significant increase from the previous week.

The estimated cost of transactions across the likes of OpenSea: Sale, Uniswap V3: Swap, and USDT: Transfer, has been suggested to be between $1.29 and $4.93, according to Etherscan.

The Current Macro Situation

BTC Impacted By Recent CPI Data

With Bitcoin having maintained an impressive bullish streak across the past week, it is now time to see whether the recently stated 6.5% CPI (Consumer Price Index) will further impact its valuation. Typically, if the figure is 6.3% or lower, a bull market is predicted as this renders US Central Bank projections from the last FOMC uncredible, however, between 6.3% and 6.5% the market tends to be restrained, but can continue pushing higher, whereas between 6.5% and 7.1% a sell-off is anticipated. With JP Morgan anticipating that this CPI data could trigger a 1.5-2% upside movement in the S&P 500, this could positively correlate with Bitcoin’s valuation and further support its momentum. This is eagerly anticipated as Bitcoin continues to push towards the $19,000 threshold and break free from its 90-day SMA.

What Could Be Coming In The Week Ahead?

With the current market state demonstrating a unanimous positive sentiment in regard to valuation, investor interest, and innovation, it can be ascertained that the coming week will also be influenced by these factors, thus encouraging this seemingly bullish momentum. This could ultimately lead to various assets within the top 100 continuing to accrue value, while various industries within blockchain begin to reestablish themselves as interest in their technology grows once again.