Binance Q3 report appraises crypto market as ‘challenging’ amid high interest rates

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange painted a somber picture of the market, with occasional bright spots for individual players.

It’s been a challenging quarter for crypto, Binance has confirmed in its Q3 market pulse report. The market was down in many sectors, the report found, although the entry of institutional players such as Deutsche Bank, Sony and PayPal helped offset some of the pain.

The global crypto market capitalization was down 8.6% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) “with the ‘higher for longer’ interest rate rhetoric set to persist.” Fundraising was at its lowest since Q4 2020 and down 21.4% QoQ, with infrastructure doing significantly better than other sectors.

Activity was down slightly on blockchains, with NEAR being the big exception. It saw an increase of about 120% QoQ. NEAR also saw a spike in active addresses that started in August. BNB fell sharply, while Ethereum rose slightly and Solana fell slightly.

Total value locked (TVL) dropped 13.1% across decentralized finance despite an influx of real-world assets, while liquid staking saw a 10.5% increase. Ethereum was the leading blockchain with 55.1% of TVL, despite an 18.6% decline. Tron’s TVL rose by 17.9% QoQ. Tether (USDT) accounted for 67.2% of the stablecoin market’s share.

Our latest State of Crypto Report summarises all the key insights, events, and learnings from Q3.

Find everything you need to know about developments in the space, including analysis of:

Layer 1s & 2s
DeFi
NFTs
Gaming

Start reading here ⤵️https://t.co/ES5z6g8FMU

— Binance Research (@BinanceResearch) October 19, 2023

Nonfungible token (NFT) sales continued their slide. September was the worst month for NFT sales since January 2021 at around $300 million. Their average sale price that month was $38.17, down from a high of $791.84 in August 2021. However, transactions with NFTs were up overall despite a sharp downturn in September.

Gaming tokens led the way in NFT sales, even though they were also the loss leaders in price with a 44.9% decrease QoQ. Less than 28% of Web3 games have gone live. Google’s decision to allow NFTs in the games on its Play Store may give the market new impetus, Binance said. Sweat Economy and SuperWalk have taken the second and third places, respectively, by unique active wallets, showing increased interest in move-to-earn games.

*Cryptocurrency price performance in Q3 2023. Source: Binance*

Six of the ten top coins saw increases this year. Solana (SOL) had the best showing, up 113.73%, and Ton debuted on the list, down 3.11%. Bitcoin (BTC) is up 63.05% so far, and Ether (ETH) is up 39.9%. BNB (BNB) had lost 12.77% by the end of Q3 2023.

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