September 2022 Recap: Ethereum Merge, Terra Luna, and more

September was a wild ride. On the negative side, inflation in the US and around the world continues to weigh on markets. Russia continues to push its agenda to annex parts of Ukraine, and some of the go-to economies like China are facing significant challenges.

On the positive side:

• Inflation was actually down compared to July.
• The much anticipated Ethereum Merge was a success.
• A number of Wall Street high rollers announced they would be supporting digital assets.

The whipsaw month meant that the some crypto assets are seeing significant movements, with major coins hovering around 15-20% down month-on-month. This was, in part, driven by mid-month hopes that inflation would come in better than forecast and the Fed would slow down.

Ethereum Merge successful

The other major event was all of the uncertainty and frankly, the speculation around the Ethereum Merge. One thing is for sure, the market pop that some were hoping for just didn’t materialise and this dragged down most of the market.

One major data point, that is now undeniable, is the rise in ETH’s share of total trading volume in the market. It’s been on the increase since 2020, but hit an all time high of 67% trading volume last week.

For context this is 3x what the trading volume was in 2020. 🔥

Trends and portfolio activities

Turning to our order trends. Once again, we are seeing 4x as many buys as sells; due to the fairly wild month, you won’t be surprised to hear that we saw more sell orders by value which let do bucking the trend that had been in place since May 2022.

Last month we surveyed our own staff and found that half were Dollar-Cost Averaging. Interestingly enough we saw a month on month increase in customers using our Auto-buy (DCA) feature.

This is promising as it’s a smart way to help manage some volatility risk during the bear market conditions we find ourselves in.

This month’s price bolter XRP (Ripple) was up as much as 18% at the time of writing, on the back of news that their long standing fight with the SEC may be coming to an end.  

Looking at what you are all buying – Bitcoin (BTC) increased in popularity this month, possibly on the back of all the uncertainty associated with Ethereum (ETH). Other layer-1 tokens like LTC, XRP, ADA, as well as Stablecoins, rounded out our top assets.

When we look at what you are selling – it’s got a lot more stablecoin in it with the top assets being BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC. Cardano (ADA) experienced quite a lot of sells this month too.

To see how the coins above, and others, performed last week.

View the latest rates: Visit our crypto live rates.

What’s been happening in the crypto space?

There has been so much going on in the crypto market in this past month, below are some of the notable highlights:

1. Binance moves to auto convert USDC – possibly to concentrate liquidity.
2. Russia to accept cryptocurrencies.
3. The amount of BTC that hasn’t moved in the last year has reached an all time high  ~66% – a classic sign of a bear market.

4. Fidelity Investments is weighing up a plan to allow Bitcoin trading on its brokerage platform.
5. State Street, the world’s largest custodian bank, says that investor interest remains strong and that more digital asset products are being planned which in turn means more institutional money into Crypto markets. Normally demand is a good sign. 
6. The much anticipated Ethereum Merge went ahead smoothly.

7. Do Kwon – the cofounder Terra Luna has had an arrest warrant issued for violating capital market rules. 

8. Glassnode is reporting that 65% of BTC hasn’t moved in the last year; “This illustrates an interesting trend — investors are holding their coins through bull markets and crypto winters.”

9. In some bullish news, Nasdaq announced that they are entering the Digital asset space. 

And that’s it for our September recap! We really hope you found something useful for your awareness of what’s happening out in the crypto space.

Missed last month’s market recap? Read our market recap from the previous month.

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