CoinGecko has published its cryptocurrency report for the year 2019. It is a 50-page overview of the state of the crypto markets with various insights into what happened in the recently ended year.
The report states that during 2019, of the five largest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash gained value, while Ether and XRP lost value. Among these, the largest gain was that of Bitcoin, with 95%, while the largest losses were recorded by XRP, with -45%.
With regard to dominance, Bitcoin was also the leader, from 56.3% to 71.5%, followed by Tether which increased its position from 1.85% to 2.35%. Most of the other cryptocurrencies decreased their dominance during 2019.
As far as exchanges are concerned, CoinGecko’s report went from analyzing 270 to 400 exchanges, with Binance retaining its leadership, with a daily average trading volume of about $1 billion, a 100% increase with respect to the previous year.
In second place among the exchanges analyzed there is Coinbase, with an average daily trading volume of about $110 million.
Of even greater significance were the increases in the cryptocurrency derivatives market, with BitMEX dominating the sector during the year, reaching an open interest of around $1 billion in December 2019, an increase of 233% compared to the figure for January.
The report also covers the stablecoin market, dominated by Tether which was the only stablecoin which increased its dominance, while all the other ones decreased in this respect.
The most volatile, among those pegged to the US dollar, was DAI, which broke its peg 111 times, while Tether only broke it 3 times. In this case “breaking its peg” means a deviation of more than 1% or less than -1% from the daily closing price with respect to USD 1.
CoinGecko’s co-founder, Bobby Ong, commented:
“2019 saw BigTech getting more involved with blockchain with Facebook taking the lead through Libra. Central banks worldwide are also actively researching blockchain and China’s Central Bank appears to be leading with its Central Bank Digital Currency. The 2020s certainly promise to provide a lot of excitement as we redefine the concept of money in our economy”.
The Coingecko report also brings together some of the key forecasts for 2020 from 20 industry leaders, including MyCrypto CEO Taylor Monahan, Blockstream’s Chief Strategy Officer Samson Mow, TRON and BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun, and Matic Network COO Sandeep Nailwal.
Among them, several agree that 2020 could be an exciting year, especially for DeFi use cases.
Finally, the document also gives space to some significant numbers of the recently ended decade: more than 34,100 mentions in Google Scholar for Bitcoin, as a result of the price increased 90,000 times, the creation of more than 6,000 different cryptocurrencies and more than 19,000 trading pairs on 400 exchanges, 3,200 companies linked to cryptocurrencies, and more than 18 million BTC mined, with only another 3 million still to be mined.
