crypto

Sage D. Young3/20/26

Altcoin trading activity has lost its mojo

Non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies have seen their trading volume plummet in the past five months. The combined trading volume of ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin, SUI, and chainlink has decreased by 60% since crypto’s October 10 liquidation event, according to Thomas Probst, a research analyst at crypto markets data provider Kaiko.

Main Altcoins Trading Volume in USD — The trading volume of ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, SUI, and LINK.

For all altcoins, spot trading volume on Binance has declined between 80% and 85% to $7.7 billion, while altcoin volume on other exchanges has dropped to $18.8 billion, down from a range of $63 billion to $91 billion in October, a Friday report from Decrypt found, citing data from CryptoQuant.

“This trend may be explained by a contraction in market liquidity over the same period,” Probst told Sherwood News. “This phenomenon is also reflected in the average 1% market depth, which stood at approximately $2.6 million before the October 10 crash and is now closer to $1.7 million when aggregated across ETH, XRP, SOL, SUI, and LINK.”

Market depth is used by investors and traders to gauge the scale of liquidity in a market. 1% market depth refers to the amount of liquidity needed to move the market by 1%.

CoinGlass’s Altcoin Season Index, a measure to assess the performance of non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies, has been sitting above 50 this week, suggesting that the current market is neither in a bitcoin dominant phase nor an altcoin season.

More Crypto

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin briefly reclaims key $80,000 level

A late Friday compromise on the CLARITY Act is boosting optimism for bitcoin in the longer term as well as shares of Circle and Coinbase today.

bitcoin symbol in poland

Sage D. Young5/1/26

The decentralized finance ecosystem had a brutal April, logging the highest monthly number of exploits ever at 28 hacks, with exploiters siphoning off a total of $635.2 million, data from DefiLlama shows.

The two largest exploits in April occurred on ethereum-based protocol KelpDAO and solana-native trading venue Drift. The incidents rattled on-chain users, as the total value locked in DeFi across all networks dropped from a monthly high of $99.5 billion to $84.3 billion on Friday.

“It’s a real problem, and if AI proponents (thinking specifically of Anthropic’s claims about Mythos) are to be believed, it’s only going to get worse,” according to Fredrick Collins, CEO of crypto analytics platform Velo.xyz. Collins argued that these exploits act as a significant limiter of institutional appeal, pointing to TheBlock’s report last week that JPMorgan held a similar view.

“It’s simple — for many people, having any chance that you lose your entire investment or balance in something supposed to be ‘safe’ is too much to bear,” Collins told Sherwood News.

However, not everyone thinks the recent hacks will curb interest from institutions. Nicolai Søndergaard, a research analyst at blockchain data firm Nansen, said to Sherwood, “I do not think these hacks will be a limit to institutional capital given the impact of AI and the speed at which threats appear stretch far beyond this industry.”

Søndergaard continued, “Crypto to me seems to have been hit harder as many projects perhaps wanted to get a product out there quickly and didn’t invest enough in security, even with companies around to audit.”

DeFi aims to enable internet users to have access to financial services, such as borrowing, lending, and trading, without any centralized intermediaries.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

After bitcoin’s best month in a year, analysts weigh in on factors for it to break $80,000 in May

May has an over 7% average historical return, but whether bitcoin can replicate this result and finally break the $80,000 level hinges on several factors.

bitcoins on the eyes

crypto

Sage D. Young4/30/26

Riot Platforms rises following Q1 revenue beat

The bitcoin miner turned data center operator released first-quarter earnings that surpassed expectations for revenue. Shares built on strong gains from Thursday’s session in after-hours trading following the results.

Riot Platforms reported:

Q1 revenue of $167.2 million, growing 3.6% from the same quarter a year ago and surpassing analysts’ expectations of $131 million.
A diluted loss per share of $1.44, much worse than analysts’ consensus estimate of a $0.72 loss, which includes unrealized loss on its bitcoin holdings.

The bulk of company’s revenue stems from its bitcoin mining activity, which made up $111.9 million in the quarter, while its data center housing revenue stood at $33.2 million, per its press release.

The first quarter of 2026 marks an inflection point for Riot. CFO Jason Chung said on Thursday in the firm’s Q1 earnings conference call, “With the delivery of our first 5 megawatts to AMD this quarter, Riot is now an active data center operator, and for the first time, our top line now includes contracted lease revenue from an investment-grade tenant.”

The earnings report comes the same week the company announced amending its $200 million credit agreement with Coinbase by replacing a floating interest rate with a fixed rate, according to an SEC filing dated on Monday.

Trump-backed World Liberty token sinks to new all-time low amid governance proposal to unlock 62 billion tokens

The top 22 addresses voting in favor control 4.8 billion tokens, making up the majority of “yes” votes.

UAE-ECONOMY-CRYPTO-CONFERENCE

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