CRYPTO MOVERS AND PRICES
Crypto was broadly recovering this morning after yesterday's aggressive selloff. BTC dominance has rebounded from a 3-year low of roughly 39% to about 44%.
Crypto Story of the Day
Crypto has undergone its most significant correction since this bull market began. At one point yesterday, the estimated aggregate crypto market cap had lost as much as about USD 1 trillion WoW. Today, we review some notable metrics.
Google Trends
Last week, global Google searches for “cryptocurrency” reached a roughly 3-year high, or 71% of ATHs from January 2018. Over the past week, users searching for “cryptocurrency” also searched for Musk's comments on BTC's energy usage and the misunderstood “ban” on crypto in China. Searches for “ethereum” also reached an all-time high last week, doubling interest seen in 2017-2018.
Ethereum Network Congestion
The Ethereum network experienced record congestion during yesterday’s selloff. For example, the hourly average of Ethereum transaction fees yesterday morning reached an all-time high of USD 282 (see Chart of the Day)— the average transaction fee on the network this month is USD 28.
The number of Ethereum transactions per second reached an all-time high on May 9, totaling 18.9. This is a slight increase compared to the previous all-time high in Ethereum transactions per second, 15.5, seen in January 2018.
Network congestion also led to Binance halting withdrawals of ETH and ERC-20 tokens yesterday morning. Coinbase also experienced delayed ETH and ERC-20 token withdrawals, citing “network congestion.”
Heightened Exchange Volume
Trading venues saw all-time high volumes yesterday. Bitfinex posted record-high volumes of USD 2.5 billion on its BTC/USD pair and USD 1.7 billion on its ETH/USD pair. Coinbase also saw a record high volume of USD 4.2 billion in trading of BTC/USD. That venue saw an hourly volume of USD 450 million for its BTC/USD pair yesterday morning. For comparison, the average hourly BTC/USD volume on Coinbase from the past 10 days is USD 67 million.
FTX also recorded record volumes yesterday. Coinbase reported “intermittent downtime” yesterday, presumably due to heightened volume.