Binance Research Releases Half-Year Report Highlighting Crypto Market’s Trajectory

Halfway through 2024, total crypto market capitalization maintained its ascent, reaching over $2.27T, reflecting a 37.3% gain year-to-date, after a robust 2023.

Gains were concentrated in the first three months of the year, when they increased by a substantial 60.2%. The cryptocurrency market lost some of its gains and sank 14.3% in the second quarter, making it comparatively more difficult.

Since the fourth Bitcoin Halving, the Runes Protocol went live, and the U.S. spot ETFs were approved, Layer-1s (“L1s”) have been having a good start to the year. Bitcoin has continued to acquire market dominance, and the inflows into the cryptocurrency market have exceeded $14 billion. Solana flourished in the memecoin sector and introduced blockchain links (blinks), BNB Chain persisted in developing opBNB and Greenfield, and Ethereum had a restaking surge and the EIP-4844 upgrade.

In the Layer-2 (“L2”) community, airdrops have become commonplace in the first half of 2024, particularly for zero knowledge (“zk”) initiatives. Total value locked in L2s now stands at $43 billion, thanks to massive inflows of money attracted by incentive promises. Total value locked (“TVL”) increased by 90% in just the first half of the year.

Total value locked (“TVL”) has increased by 72.8% year-to-date (“YTD”) to US$94.1B from US$54.4B at the beginning of 2024 because of the large infusion of funds into Decentralized Finance (DeFi). As a result of this enhancement, protocols are emerging that provide on-chain access to financial primitives that were previously unavailable, benefiting almost every DeFi industry spanning both large and specialized markets.

After a severe slump, the stablecoin market has just turned around, and we are now just 14.5% short of the highs reached in April 2022, immediately before the downfall of TerraUSD (UST). The market capitalization of stablecoins reached a two-year high of $161 billion on June 30, 2024. Although USDT from Tether is still the most popular, USDC from Circle and USDe from Ethena have both seen gains in market share.

The first half of the year was a wild ride for the NFT markets, with falling sales volumes and floor prices for large projects dropping by half or more. As the Blast token airdrop propelled Blur to even greater supremacy, Pudgy Penguins’ tangible toys had mixed results. Moreover, Bitcoin NFTs maintained their luster.

Lens Protocol’s announcement of their forthcoming zk chain, Lens Network, continues the development of SocialFi. After the introduction of Frames, Farcaster’s user base continued to expand, and friend.tech introduced their token and v2. One of the notable parts was the Fantasy.top trading card game.

Despite a solid first quarter for the Web3 gaming industry, the market capitalization of gaming project tokens and other altcoins fell sharply in the second quarter. Projects like Pixels and Hamster Kombat have been able to draw in a lot of players thanks to the promise of token airdrops, thus user growth figures are looking good compared to declining prices.

Among the other noteworthy topics are decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), memecoins, and artificial intelligence (AI). Throughout the first half of 2024, investors and the wider community have maintained a keen interest in these areas.

Looking forward to making great strides in six main areas in the second half of 2024, and are excited about the year ahead. These topics cover a wide range of tales and sectors, including but not limited to: the macro environment, the Bitcoin ecosystem, applications in the ownership economy, real-world assets (“RWAs”), and many more.

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