Key Highlights
- The cryptocurrency market posted a bullish performance in March, with Bitcoin leading the way with a 23.03% gain. The cryptocurrency market capitalization gained 10.19%, while the altcoin market gained 2.03%.
- Five cryptocurrencies to watch out for in April 2023 are Bitcoin, BNB Chain’s BNB, Ethereum’s Ether, XRP, and Conflux’s CFX.
- The article provides an overview of the performance of each of these cryptocurrencies in March, highlighting key events that impacted their prices and market trends.
The cryptocurrency space in March, saw it post a bullish performance pushing it into the fourth consecutive month of gain.
Despite the gains seen, the market was crowded with a lot of regulatory and market FUD. However, despite these occurrences, the market still posted a massive bullish performance to end the first quarter of the year.
Flagship cryptocurrency asset, Bitcoin, posted a bullish performance, as the rest of the market followed in its trend. It began trading from $23,147.35 at the beginning of the month and ultimately ended the month at $28,478.48, representing a 23.03% gain.
The cryptocurrency market capitalization in March gained 10.19% for the month, from $1.08 trillion at the start of the month to the end of the month at $1.19 trillion. The cryptocurrency market capitalization traded as high as $1.20 trillion during the month.
The Altcoin market experienced similar bullishness, gaining 2.03% in March, from approximately $622.1 billion to currently standing at $634.7 billion at the end of the month. During the month, we saw the altcoin market capitalization trade as high as $646 billion.
With the current bullish trend seen in the market, here is a look at 5 cryptocurrencies investors should watch out for in April 2023:
Bitcoin’s BTC
For Bitcoin, a key point of resistance from earlier in its current halving cycle indicates that the current trading zone represents a major hurdle for bulls to overcome. Should they manage it, price targets extend beyond the $30,000 mark. Matthew Hyland, a crypto analyst, summarized in his latest tweet on BTC that, “Bitcoin has been consolidating below the biggest resistance/support of the last 2+ years. A whole new ballgame if BTC breaks it. NASDAQ & S&P went strong into the weekly close. Still, major pessimism and disbelief while major milestones are close to being made for Stocks/BTC.”
Popular Twitter account Byzantine General predicted that a breakthrough of resistance immediately above the spot price would result in a sea of liquidations, leading to further upward momentum. The account tweeted, “It feels like some bear is very desperately trying to defend the 29k to 30k region. I think that when this level breaks massive liqs will come in. And it does feel like a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ because there’s zero froth in the market, only some spot supply.”
To add, according to data from Coinglass, the 23% gain seen in March almost matches its 2021 performance, with 2013 remaining its most volatile. This is relevant because Bitcoin’s trajectory mimics both years, seeing at least three months “in the green” before significant consolidation began.
Bitcoin ended the month’s trading at $28,478.48.
BNB Chain’s BNB
On March 27, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Binance and its CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, alleging that the company illegally offered crypto derivatives services to Americans and facilitated illicit financial activity.
BNB dropped by over 5.5% to $305 on the announcement day, logging its worst daily performance since Feb. 13, when its price dropped by over 5.8% due to another regulatory crackdown involving Binance-branded stablecoin Binance USD. BNB’s price stabilized on March 28, wobbling between gains and losses as CZ refuted CFTC’s allegations. However, the BNB/USD pair risked falling further if one considers its recent response to regulatory actions. For instance, the New York regulator’s BUSD crackdown in February 2023 preceded a 15%-plus BNB price decline.
BNB ended the month’s trading at $317.04.
Ethereum’s Ether
In the digital assets space, Ethereum remains the largest smart contract platform, hosting a plethora of financial products, innovation, and automation, with varying degrees of decentralization (generally referred to as DeFi).
From an on-chain perspective, Ether’s short-term and long-term trends look skewed toward the bulls. Most Ethereum whale cohorts have increased their ETH accumulation in recent weeks, according to the latest data from Santiment. For instance, the supply of Ether held by addresses with a 1,000-10,000 ETH balance (blue in the chart below) has grown by 0.5% in March.
Similarly, the 1 million-10 million ETH and the 10 million-100 million ETH balance cohorts have witnessed 0.4% and 0.5% rises, respectively. The growth appeared amid what appears to be the absorption of selling pressure introduced by the 100,000-1 million ETH (pink) and 10,000-100,000 ETH address cohorts. At the same time, the growth could be attributed to the network’s proof-of-stake contracts, directly or by using third-party stakers such as Lido DAO (LDO).
The net Ether deposited at the official Ethereum 2.0 address crossed above 18 million ETH after rising about 3.5% in March. The deposits have grown ahead of Ethereum’s Shanghai and Capella upgrades on April 12, which would enable stakers to withdraw ETH from the PoS smart contract. Currently, this is not possible.
Ether ended the month trading at $1,822.02.
XRP
Ripple’s chances of winning the court case against the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) improved on March 21 after the presiding judge, Analisa Torres, decided to exclude an expert’s opinion explaining how could be a security. On March 27, another U.S. regulatory move was a blessing in disguise for XRP holders. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the U.S. charged Binance with improper compliance procedures and market manipulation.
The regulatory body classified Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin as commodities in the filing. Some believe that this classification will extend to XRP as well. Thus, effectively refuting the SEC’s claim of XRP being a security. The market’s expectation of Ripple winning the case against the SEC has pushed XRP’s price to new yearly highs already this month and if Ripple goes on to win the case against SEC, the bullish momentum in XRP will likely continue in the medium to long term. To add, XRP was the fourth largest gainer for March 2023, as it hit a 10-month high.
XRP ended the month’s trading at $0.5385.
Conflux’s CFX
Conflux (CFX) is a public layer-1 blockchain that was made to power decentralized applications (dApps), e-commerce, and Web 3.0 infrastructure by being more scalable, decentralized, and secure than existing protocols. The protocol makes it easier to transfer valuable assets by making the process quick, effective, free of network congestion, and with low transaction costs. The platform is based on the Tree-Graph consensus mechanism, and it combines Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithms to achieve consensus. The protocol uses Turing-complete smart contracts written in Solidity, just like those on Ethereum, and is compatible with the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine).
Conflux Network continued its positive run from February, nearly doubling its price in March. The project’s team continued to strengthen its partnerships in China by adding XCMD, the world’s third-largest construction machinery manufacturer, and Zen Spark Technology. The Conflux team also supports the development of permissionless applications. It has established a grants program to promote its ecosystem development.
Over the years, Conflux has earned the reputation of a Chinese enterprise blockchain with partners in Oreo China, McDonald’s China, and Chinese Instagram equivalent Little Red Book. The blockchain also hosts a stablecoin pegged to the Chinese yuan with the approval of the Chinese government, which is highly encouraging given the strict influence of the authorities over state policies.
The Conflux Network deploys both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mechanisms to increase scalability and decentralization. The network processes between 3,000 to 6,000 transactions per second, which is considerably faster than Ethereum’s speed of 15 tps.
While Conflux has established partnerships with leading Chinese brands, the activity on the blockchain has yet to justify the 500% increase in CFX’s price rally in the last two months. Data shows that the number of new Conflux addresses and NFTs minted on the platform has stayed at par with previous months with no evident spike.
CFX ended the month’s trading at $0.4134.