The third full week of April has been rated by many analysts as one of the worst periods in the trading history of cryptocurrencies in 2023.
While more than 50% of digital assets have returned double-percentage digits when year-to-date (YTD) returns are analyzed, the market has suddenly turned bearish.
Negative market sentiment has not boded well for JPEX investors despite much positive news surrounding the blockchain-powered economy. During the week, it was reported that ETH had become a deflationary coin (more ETH are being removed from circulation), and the Bitcoin network had become secure due to a new peak in mining difficulty.
More importantly, there seems a break in crypto regulation as the European Parliament backed the world’s first comprehensive rules for the decentralized finance sector. Only time will tell if regulatory bodies across America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia will join forces, and introduce similar legislation which will boost the adoption of crypto.
Over the period (Sunday, April 16 to Saturday, April 22), four (4) cryptocurrencies in the form of Blur (BLUR), Algorand (ALGO), Immutable X (IMX), and Conflux (CFX) brought double-percentage losses to JPEX holders. The only cryptocurrency that performed well was Zilliqa (ZIL). Below is an in-depth analysis of the events that led to the massive losses.
Conflux (CFX) plummeted more than 20%
CFX is the native asset of Conflux, a layer one (1) blockchain that powers decentralized applications (dApps), Web3, and electronic commerce infrastructure by using its features of security, decentralization, and scalability.
Unlike other protocols, it combines the Proof-of-Work (POW) and Proof-of-Stake (POS) algorithms and this makes its network stronger.
CFX suffered from an industry-wide plunge in the price of digital assets. Over the period, CFX’s daily trading volume decreased from $298 million to $128 million, and so did market capitalization.
By the end of the week, CFX’s market value was approximately $828 million from $1.05 billion, data from CoinMarketCap showed.
The price metrics showed that CFX opened the week on Sunday, April 16 with a trading price of $0.3757, reached a weekly high price of $0.384 on the same day, tested a weekly low price of $0.2825 on Saturday, April 22, and closed the period at $0.2973 on the same day.
Overall, CFX plunged by 21%, the most by mainstream tokens supported by JPEX.
Blur (BLUR) dropped by more than 15%
BLUR is the novel token behind one of the most popular non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces in the digital collectibles space.
Over the week, it was reported by major crypto news portals that sales and users on NFT marketplaces have tanked.
Since Blur dethroned OpenSea to become the NFT platform of choice for the buying and selling of digital art in 2023, its novel token took a massive hit in the process.
Investor interest (trading volume) started strongly during the start of the week but dropped off from $100 million to $50 million. This was highly evident in BLUR’s price performance after it opened and closed the week at $0.767 and $0.6305 respectively.
The token reached a weekly high price of $0.8329 on Tuesday, April 18 and tested a weekly low price of $0.5744 on Friday, April 21.
Overall, BLUR descended by 18% and this saw its market value reduced to $281 million from $332 million.
Algorand (ALGO) plunged by 18%
ALGO is the native asset of Algorand, a blockchain network that supports many applications. ALGO shed 18% of its price during the week in large part to being named among the latest rounds of cryptocurrencies perceived as securities by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
On Monday, April 17, the SEC labelled Algorand (ALGO) along with Real Estate Protocol (HT), Naga (NGC), Monolith (TKN), Dash (DASH), and OMG Network (OMG) as securities in a lawsuit against crypto firm Bittrex. This was reflected negatively in all of ALGOs metrics. Daily trading volume moved from $123 million to $40 million.
ALGOs 18% decline over the week came from closing the week on Saturday, April 22 with a trading price of $0.1091.
Before the close, ALGO opened the week on Sunday, April 16 at $0.2322, reached a weekly high of $0.2353 on Monday, April 17, and tested a weekly low of $0.1831 on Friday, April 21. Market capitalization fell from $1.6 billion to $1.3 billion.
Immutable X (IMX) also lost 18% of its value
IMX is the novel token of Immutable X, one of the most vibrant Web3 ecosystems in the blockchain space today.
IMX is primarily affected by the NFT market which its parent company Immutable X plays an integral role.
Unfortunately, an industry-wide plunge in global NFT market sales did not help the fortunes of the digital currency.
This is the reason its market capitalization fell below the $1 billion mark to around $901 million by the end of the week on Saturday, April 22.
As a metaverse token, IMX opened the week on Sunday, April 16 with a trading price of $1.2048, and declined to a weekly low price of $0.9173 on April 21 after reaching a weekly high price of $1.2306 on April 16. The token eventually closed the period at $0.9857 on April 22.
The negative market aura around NFTs culminated in daily trading volume slashing from $47 million to $22 million.
Many analysts believe IMX can pick up if new and exciting projects are added to its ecosystem.
Zilliqa (ZIL) went up by more than 10%
ZIL is the native asset of Zilliqa, a blockchain designed to offer high throughput with the ability to complete thousands of transactions per second.
To the surprise of many crypto enthusiasts, ZIL was the mainstream token that brought real gains to JPEX holders.
This came at the back of a network upgrade announcement. On Friday, April 21, Zilliqa said that it will be implementing Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility on Tuesday, April 25.
The development team behind the project announced a series of lined-up upgrades which will improve the protocol’s efficiency, reliability, and use cases.
ZIL went up by 13% within the period on the back of closing the week at a much-improved price of $0.03486 after opening the week at $0.0308. ZIL reached weekly high and low prices of $0.03581 and $0.02948 respectively.
Daily trading volume increased from $41 million to approximately $262 million. This led to market capitalization soaring to about $553 million from $511 million.
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