There are some crypto assets that are performing better than the general trend, such as Polygon’s MATIC, or performing worse, such as Monero.
Summary
Crypto analysis of Polygon (MATIC) and Monero (XMR)
At this time, the trend in crypto markets is fairly smooth, such that the prices of several cryptocurrencies are following the general trend dictated by Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Polygon (MATIC)
MATIC is Polygon’s native cryptocurrency, as well as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum.
Polygon is a Layer-2 solution for Ethereum, which allows for faster and, more importantly, cheaper transactions, and it has its own blockchain with MATIC as its native cryptocurrency.
First, it is worth mentioning that MATIC’s 2022 has not been as burdensome as that of many other cryptocurrencies.
Although it is true that its price went from a high of $2.92 in December 2021 to $0.38 in June 2022, the percentage loss of -87% was less than that of many other second- or third-tier cryptocurrencies.
ETH over the same period lost less, but Ethereum and Bitcoin are stand-alone narratives.
What is interesting about Polygon is that the rise began as early as July 2022. This is equivalent to saying that the last bear market ended six months earlier than most other cryptocurrencies.
It is enough to consider that in August 2022 its price was already back around $1, up 163% in less than two months, at the height of the bear market.
Despite the fact that just before the collapse of the crypto markets due to the FTX bankruptcy, its price had also already climbed back above $1.2, it later returned below $0.8, which is the level with which it closed in 2022.
In the first month and a half of the new year it almost doubled in value, rising above $1.5 shortly after mid-February.
At that point, it looked like Polygon’s MATIC could be one of the big players in the 2023 crypto markets, and instead it began to decline.
The decline has now lasted for more than two weeks, with a drop that has caused it to lose 27% dropping it to $1.13.
However, the current level is still as much as 48% higher than it was at the beginning of the year, and as much as 197% higher than the 2022 low.
In other words, although in the short term the price of MATIC is not performing well, in the medium to long term it is still performing very well. It is enough to mention that in December 2020, which is before the last big bull run was triggered, the price was below $0.02.
It is important not to forget that MATIC has a concrete use within the Polygon blockchain, so the more Polygon is used, the more users require MATIC.
The graph of the number of daily transactions on Polygon’s blockchain clearly shows that after the boom in early 2021, there has been no slump.
In fact, since October 2021, the number of daily transactions has fluctuated between 2 and 4 million, denoting conspicuous and continuous use of this blockchain.
Monero (XMR)
As for XMR, the cryptocurrency native to the Monero blockchain, the argument is partly similar, but partly also very different.
The similarity lies in the fact that even on the Monero blockchain, the number of daily transactions has not plummeted.
On the contrary, it has even been fluctuating between 15,000 and 40,000 since early 2021, with a constancy that gives one pause for thought.
These are still much lower levels than those of Polygon, but it is worth mentioning that many NFTs are also traded on this network, whereas only XMR tokens are traded on Monero’s blockchain.
Monero remains the leading high-privacy cryptocurrency in terms of usage, and this consistent use is also reflected in somewhat lower price volatility.
Indeed, since the beginning of the year XMR has virtually not been gaining, though it has not been losing either, with a +26% in January followed by a -19%.
Not only is the current price more or less the same as it was at the end of 2022, but in these past 2+ months Monero’s price volatility has been significantly lower than that of other first, second, or third tier cryptocurrencies.
It is worth noting that XMR capitalizes only $2.7 billion, ranking Monero only 25th among cryptocurrencies with the largest market capitalization. Just to have a point of reference, this is just over half of Avalanche’s AVAX.
At this point, it is not even all that surprising that the all-time high, $517 touched in May 2021, was not much higher than the high of the previous cycle, touched in early 2018.
What’s more, if we exclude the peak highs, both of which were reached in a few days and followed by a collapse after a few days, XMR’s current price is only 53% lower than that of the second peak in 2021.
Another similarity with Polygon is the fact that the 2022 peak low the price of Monero hit in June, and it has been practically rising for more than six months since then.
However, the difference is that since then the gain turns out to be only 35%, which gives a very good understanding of how the price of XMR is actually much less volatile than that of many other cryptocurrencies, excluding the occasional spikes that form in a short time, and disappear as quickly.
