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BLUR flips OpenSea and NFT trading reaches USD 4.5 BILLION in Q1
In this article, let’s take a deep dive into CoinGecko’s 2023 Q1 Crypto/NFT Industry Report to understand how the space is bouncing back from the bear market blues of yesteryear! The start of 2023 marked a new start for the crypto market. It rebounds from the late 2022 slump and sees a 48.9% increase in market cap from $831.8B to $1.238T by March 31, 2023. This resurgence helped to recover losses from the collapse of FTX and Luna .
It also drove Bitcoin and Ethereum prices to roughly $28,000 and $1,800 respectively. Let’s learn more about the new direction that the crypto space is heading.
NFT Bear Market No More! 2023 looks promising for crypto and NFTs
CoinGecko’s comprehensive 2023 Q1 Crypto Industry Report provides an overview of the crypto market landscape, an analysis of Bitcoin and Ethereum, an in-depth look at the DeFi and NFT ecosystems, and a review of the performance of both centralized and decentralized exchanges. Bitcoin (BTC) of all cryptos, experienced an impressive gain of almost 72% in Q1 2023. During the same period, the crypto market performed strongly with a total market capitalization of $1.2 trillion.
This reflects a gain of 48.9% compared to the end of 2022. Average daily trading volume also increased by 30% compared to the previous quarter. During Q1 2023, the top 15 stablecoins experienced a 4.5% decrease in market capitalization ($6.2 billion). This is primarily due to the shutdown of BUSD by Paxos and the brief USDC depegging incident. Tether (USDT) continued to lead the stablecoin market with a 20.5% increase in market capitalization ($13.6 billion).
NFT trading volume increased by 68% from $2.1 billion in Q4 2022 to $4.5 billion in Q1 2023, with most of it coming from the new platform Blur. Blur increased its market share from 52.8% in December 2022 to 71.8% in March 2023, while OpenSea’s share shrank from 29.3% to 21.7%. Solana’s ecosystem saw a decline, with Magic Eden’s trading volume falling 67.9% from December 2022 to March 2023, and y00ts and DeGods migrating to other chains.
DeFi & Spot Trading Growth
In Q1 2023, spot trading volume on the top 10 crypto exchanges increased by 18.1% from the previous quarter, totaling $2.8 trillion. Monthly trading volume has increased since December 2022, but has yet to reach the levels seen in H1 2022. DEXs grew faster than CEXs due to regulatory breaches, but CEXs still accounted for over 90% of trading volume.
Liquid governance tokens led the charge in the DeFi sector, leading to a 65.2% increase in market capitalization during Q1 2023, representing an increase of $29.6 billion. In particular, Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade saw liquid funds management tokens confirmed to increase by 210.9%. This pushed it to become the third largest category in DeFi. On the other hand, DEX governance tokens grew by 44.3% in Q1, but saw a -5% decline in market share since January.
The full 44-page detailed CoinGecko industry analysis slider can be found here, for more information on various sectors and micro-movements within the crypto/NFT industry.
