Crypto Index Tracker – DeFi and Smart Contract Platforms Lead Decline

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Bitcoin and Ethereum have tumbled 7% and 13% over the past week, respectively. The total crypto market cap is down 4.5% over the past 24 hours to lows of around $2.3 trillion. Worries about a hawkish Fed have likely contributed to this. Within crypto, the moves were not uniform – both our smart contract and DeFi indices saw the largest declines of between 9.3% and 11.5% over the past seven days (see charts below). Next, it was the Bitcoin-only index, falling 7%. The metaverse index fell the least at 6.4%.

Here are the performance details.

• DeFi index – All five coins in our DeFi basket fell over the past seven days. Compound (COMP) fell the most at -17% and PancakeSwap (CAKE) fell the least at -8%.
• Metaverse index – All five coins in our metaverse basket saw declines. Enjin Coin (ENJ) fell the most at -20% and Gala (GALA) fell the least at -2.4%.
• Smart contract platform index – All five coins in our smart contract basket are also in the red. Solana (SOL) fell the most at 20% and Polkadot (DOT) fell the least at 9%.
• Bitcoin (BTC) index – This fell 7% but notably has performed better than Ethereum and Solana as of recently.

What are in the four indices?

Here are the indices in more detail.

• Bitcoin – The OG of crypto markets deserves its own category and is in many ways the true benchmark for any other crypto market.
• Smart contract platforms – After Bitcoin, the big innovation was to have blockchains that were more programmable. These could host smart contracts or decentralized applications and have allowed the emergence of the metaverse and DeFi. Ethereum (ETH) is the most popular version of smart contract platform. We include rivals – Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA) and Avalanche (AVAX). We also include Polkadot (DOT), which allows interoperability between blockchains and the use of smart contracts via parachains.
• Metaverse – Coins associated with the creation of a virtual space/digital world on the internet using a combination of augmented reality, virtual reality and social networks. One of the largest in this space is Axie Infinity (AXS), which is play-to-earn gaming platform. Another is Decentraland (MANA), which is a virtual world that allows the ownership of land among other things. The three other coins we include are Sandbox (SAND), Enjin Coin (ENJ) and Gala (GALA).
• Decentralized finance (DeFi) – Financial services built on top of blockchain networks with no central intermediaries. This can be a very broad category, so we narrow this down to platforms that focus on lending and borrowing or to yield farming. The five coins we have selected are Aave (AAVE), Maker (MKR), Compound (COMP), Uniswap (UNI) and PancakeSwap (CAKE).

Bilal Hafeez is the CEO and Editor of Macro Hive. He spent over twenty years doing research at big banks –JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and Nomura – where he had various ‘global head’ roles and did FX, rates and cross-markets research.

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