GM, and welcome another edition of the CoinStats Scoop Monthly Review! 🥂 October was an amazing month for the crypto industry as it was full of green charts, increasing prices and exciting developments so let’s get to it! 🤑
Market Overview
What has been largely an uneventful year, and more specifically summer, in crypto exploded upwards in October as investors, market participants and speculators alike became filled with excitement about a potential spot BTC ETF. As a result of that excitement, BTC had it’s best monthly percentage gain since January and closed October above 35k! 💪
In the background of a never-ending, choppy summer for crypto prices, the momentum and narrative of BTC ETFs were slowly building. As prices continued to stagnate, volatility was eventually expected, and the volatile move we got was BTC, and the entire crypto ecosystem was moving sharply higher! 🤑
As mentioned, the powerful BTC move upward was propelled largely by the excitement around what appears to be an almost guaranteed approval of numerous spot Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). While the technical details aren’t necessarily important, the approval of spot BTC ETFs will open up easy access to Bitcoin for everyday investors as well as the largest financial institutions in the world! 🤯 For over 10 years now, the United States SEC has denied every application for a spot BTC ETF, something that is likely to change as soon before 2024!
In addition to that, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with $9.4 trillion dollars of assets under management, has applied for a BTC ETF and appears poised to have their application approved along with a number of other massive financial institutions!
While BTC and the ETF news stole the show in October, BTC was far from the only asset to experience rapid price appreciation as the total crypto market cap increased by 21% throughout October and now sits firmly above $1.3 trillion dollars! 🥳 ETH lagged slightly behind the broader market in October but still closed the month 10% higher and currently sits comfortably above 1.8k at $1850!
If there was one token that maybe outperformed BTC in attention and mindshare throughout October it was clearly Solana! As of writing this, SOL climbed another 11% higher today and even briefly touched $45. That’s a long way up from the FTX-induced lows of ~$9!! Over the past 30 days, SOL has gained a mouth-watering 80% !!! 😮 BTC and SOL definitely garnered the lion’s share of attention across October, but they were far from the only insanely impressive tokens as the other standout tokens that we’ve previously written about multiple times 😉 include: INJ +98%, RLB +80%, PEPE +54% and LINK +52%!
With the total crypto market rising 21% in October, the above tokens weren’t the only ones to enjoy strong gains! 💪 As usual, it’s easier to identify and place tokens into their respective categories or sectors because it helps to give clarity to the constantly growing crypto ecosystem while also allowing you to visualize which coins are outperforming their peers! The categories along with their top-performing coins that we generally separate things into include:
Layer 1s — SOL +80%, NEAR 35%, APT +31%, FTM +28%, AVAX +27%, XRP +19%, ADA +17%
DeFi — SUSHI +99%, INJ +91%, RUNE +51%, AAVE +31%, GMX +15%, SNX +14%, YFI +11%
Gaming — GALA +34%, GMT +22%, ILV +21%, AXS +20%, MANA +21%, APE +15%, MAGIC +12%, & IMX +11%
Infrastructure — LINK +52%, AR +43%, RNDR +42%, GRT +29%, FIL +19%
Scaling — MINA +56%, STX +28%, DYDX +22%, MATIC +18%, ARB +9%
Memecoins — FLOKI +72%, PEPE +54%, & DOGE +12%
Of course the question after a massive, weeks long rally is almost always people questioning how much higher can we go? Just as in cyclical bear markets people generally don’t think their coins can go lower, when a consistent uptrend and shift occurs people sometimes think coins can’t continue to go up! Well, we survived the cyclical bear market and are now coming out of the other side with a clear uptrend forming. 🤓
As we’ve always said, coins rarely go up or down in a straight line so there will surely still be some bumps and bruises along the way but we’ve endured the toughest part of crypto cycles over the past two years! 💪 Aiding our future outlook is the previously mentioned excitement around the eventual approval of spot BTC ETFs (led by the world’s largest asset manager) and that generally speaking, “crypto” as an asset class is still treated as taboo in the traditional finance space. Eventually, they’ll all come around but in the meantime we’ll continue to take advantage of their mistake in writing off crypto! 😉
October’s Noteworthy Developments
Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy announces the company’s 3rd quarter earnings saying that they have purchased an additional 6,067 BTC for $167 million dollars. MicroStrategy’s total BTC holdings now sit at 158,400 for a total cost of $4.69 billion dollars 🤯
USDT stablecoin issuer Tether says that the company is working towards “publishing real-time data on the reserves backing USDT”
InvescoUS and Galaxy become the 5th United States financial institution to file for a spot Ethereum ETF
Hong-Kong based venture fund CMCC Global raises $100 million dollars for a new crypto fund
MEXC Ventures, the investment arm of crypto exchange MEXC, invests “eight figures” into TON coin and the TON ecosystem while announcing a strategic partnership
Crypto behemoth Grayscale files with the SEC to convert their Ethereum Trust (ETHE) with $5 billion of assets under management to a spot ETH ETF
Singapore — Coinbase is granted a full regulatory license in Singapore; crypto market maker GSR secures “in principle approval from Singapore for a major payment institution license”; Ripple’s XRP is now fully licensed to provide digital payment token services in Singapore
Saudi Arabia’s NEOM megaproject proposes a $50 million dollar investment into crypto gaming conglomerate Animoca Brands
Thailand’s second largest bank acquires local crypto exchange Satang as they look to deepen their crypto strategies
Mastercard, one of the global leaders in credit card payments, partners with crypto company MoonPay to expand their crypto strategies
Crypto wallet company Metamask partners with Stripe to enable US users to easily on ramp fiat
Protocol and Token Updates
What’s the reward of putting up with a grueling, chop-filled, slow summer? Explosive fall months leading us into a bright future of 2024 and beyond! 😎 Prices weren’t the only thing up throughout October as the protocols and teams that continue to push crypto forward announced a number of developments that we should reap the benefits of moving forward such as:
Chainlink (LINK) completes a successful interoperability experiment through CCIP; LINK also teases the ability of users to “pay with anything, received in LINK the universal gas token”
Celestia (TIA), the highly anticipated modular blockchain network, officially launches their token and mainnet
Floki (FLOKI) launches a tokenization platform dedicated to real world assets (RWAs)
Scroll, a zkEVM Ethereum Layer 2 protocol, officially launches their mainnet
Polygon announces that their 1:1 transition from MATIC to POL is live on Ethereum mainnet — “POL is a next-generation token that can power a vast ecosystem of ZK-based L2 chains…turning POL into a hyperproductive token”
Fantom (FTM) launches their Sonic protocol upgrade on testnet
Frax Finance (FXS) announces the launch of sFRAX enabling FXS stakers to earn yield
Rollbit (RLB) confirms that their buyback and burn mechanism is now entirely on-chain
Yearn Finance (YFI) launches a tokenomics revamp and introduces veYFI
dYdX (DYDX) officially completes their transition from ETH to their own, standalone ATOM chain
Solana’s Breakout Month
While the above developments are impressive, no one had a better month than Solana and its SOL token holders so it’s worth examining what partially led to its strong rally! SOL’s incredible recent ascent is fitting as we’re approaching the unfortunate 1 year anniversary of FTX’s collapse. Almost a year ago today, SOL’s price fell into the teens before eventually bottoming below $10 in late December. Since then, the token is up a staggering ~400% 🤯 and SOL looks primed to be one of the top-performing coins over the next few years!!
As long-time readers of the CoinStats Scoop know, we’ve always been optimistic about SOL’s chance at recovery, something that has played out incredibly well! Some of the recent developments that have contributed to the constantly growing excitement around SOL are:
Solana Labs launches startup incubator to recruit teams and protocols to SOL
SOL-based crypto wallet company Backpack announces that they’ve gained regulatory approval in Dubai to launch a crypto exchange
Visa, one of the world’s largest credit card payment companies, is expanding its stablecoin settlement capabilities to Solana
Shopify, one of the world’s largest online merchant companies, has integrated Solana Pay to its platform allowing millions of merchants to directly accept USDC on SOL
Eclipse, a protocol building a modular ETH L2, introduces “Ethereum’s fastest L2, powered by the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM)”
Armada launches their protocol on SOL enabling tooling that “revolutionizes how tokens are launched and managed, giving DAOs and project treasuries the power to unlock: initial token distribution, liquidity, price discovery, protocol reward management and more”
Elusiv launches their protocol enabling fully private token swaps on Solana
As you can see, the development on Solana has been steadily increasing while protocols, teams, and ecosystem partners continue to build and push the ecosystem forward! Once again, it’s important to remember that no matter how strong tokens are, SOL in this case, they never go up in a straight line! With that being said, if you’ve yet to explore the Solana ecosystem we’ve included two tweets below that cover everything you could possibly want to know to get started! 😎
Tools To Navigate
One of the last major developments of October came from our amazing team here at CoinStats! 💪 As the below tweet says, we’ve revamped the entire CoinStats app and have numerous new features all designed to help you better navigate crypto’s ever-changing markets!
While we of course encourage you to check out the thread for yourself, the highlights are:
Chain Activity — allows you to easily track airdrop metrics and compare to the other wallets so you can make the most of any potential free money 🤑
CoinStats Wallet — we’re always improving this core feature and it now includes an integrated CoinStats Wallet to the portfolio tab, Face ID for faster and safer transaction confirmation and a redesigned portfolio page for more direct navigation
Instant Analytics Insights — easily tap into comprehensive data analysis at your fingertips!
Action Menu — housing all your important actions in one place: connect your portfolio, add transactions, create a CoinStats Wallet, buy crypto with fiat, earn on your crypto and swap!
Portfolio Settings — now directly accessible from your Portfolio tab
Hidden Balances Organized — small coin balances are now neatly organized below your core assets! 🙈
Flip and Hide — easily hide and unhide your balances with a flip of your phone!
Coin Price Filtering — filter any coin data by timeframe or coin count 🔍
Upgraded More Tab — now enjoy a cleaner look, better CoinStats profiles, simpler navigation and updated settings 💪
Tweets & Memes
There’s a constantly diminishing number of BTC available to buy on exchanges! 🤫
Not only are prices going up, but the on-chain metrics and users are following them up! ☝️
Garrett details some awesome trends that everyone should have on their radar! 💪
As a final reminder, CoinStats is constantly building to help you navigate crypto! 🤓
Wrapping Up
Whew!! What a freaking month October was! Bitcoin led the impressive charge upwards as ETF excitement continues to take hold across the market while the entire crypto total market followed BTC’s lead and climbed 21% throughout October! 🤑
Prices weren’t the only thing up as development, users, and on-chain metrics across essentially every crypto ecosystem followed prices upward, and builders continued to relentlessly ship updates increasing the future outlook! Speaking of building and future outlook, Solana’s incredible October has positioned it as one of the best ecosystems to explore and be involved in moving forward! Builders and market participants continue to advance fundamental improvements to collectively push the crypto space toward more global adoption. 💪
The outlook for 2023 and beyond continues to improve drastically, and crypto's long-term future has never looked brighter! As usual, CoinStats will continue to guide you through the world of crypto and DeFi. We'll see you next time for another edition of CoinStats Scoop! 😎
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