Crypto Index Tracker: DeFi Outperforms on EU and US Regulatory Efforts
- By Bilal Hafeez and Dalvir Mandara
- 3 min read
Crypto markets have been volatile this week as investors digest regulatory endeavours from the US and the EU. Notably, the European Parliament voted against anonymous crypto transactions as an anti-money-laundering effort and the SEC released a recommendation for crypto exchanges to store information about the crypto asset holdings of their customers. As for the performance of our various indexes, our DeFi Index is up the most at 17%. Our Smart Contract Index and our Privacy Index are up 10% and 6% each, respectively. Our Metaverse Index is up just 1% and our bitcoin index is the only one to have registered losses this week – it is down 1%.
- Smart Contract Platform Index: Solana (SOL) is up the most at 25% and EOS (EOS) is up the least at 1%. Ethereum (ETH) is up 6%.
- DeFi Index: Aave (AAVE) is up the most at 42% and Loopring (LRC) is the only coin to have registered losses – it’s down 0.3%.
- Metaverse Index: Terra Virtua Kollect (TVK) is up the most at 18% and Phantasma (SOUL) is down the most at 13%.
- Privacy Index: Secret (SCRT) is up the most at 19% and Zcash (ZEC) is down the most at 10%.
- Bitcoin: This is down 1%.
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 decentralised applications and have allowed the emergence of the metaverse and defi. Ethereum (ETH) is the most popular version of a smart contract platform. As well as ethereum, we also include some key competitors. The constituents of this index are: Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Avalanche (AVAX), Solana (SOL), Fantom (FTM), VeChain (VET), Terra (LUNA), EOS (EOS), and Chainlink (LINK). 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. The constituents of this index are Axie Infinity (AXS), The Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA), Enjin Coin (ENJ), Aavegotchi (GHST), Terra Virtua Kolect (TVK), Ultra (UOS), Phantasma (SOUL), RedFOX Labs (RFOX), and Gala (GALA).
- Decentralised Finance (DeFi): financial services built on top of blockchain networks with no central intermediaries. This can be a broad category, so we narrow this down to platforms that focus on lending/borrowing, yield farming, automated market making and decentralised exchange tokens. The constituents of this index are: Aave (AAVE), Compound (COMP), Uniswap (UNI), Yearn.finance (YFI), Loopring (LRC), PancakeSwap (CAKE), Maker (MKR), 1inch (1INCH), Thorchain (RUNE), and Terra (LUNA).
- Privacy Coins: coins that obscure transactions on the blockchain to maintain the anonymity of its users and their activity. The constituents of this index are Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), Dash (DASH), Verge (XVG), Horizen (ZEN), Beam (BEAM), Secret (SCRT), Decred (DCR), Keep Network (KEEP), and Dusk Network (DUSK).
Dalvir Mandara is a Quantitative Researcher at Macro Hive. Dalvir has a BSc Mathematics and Computer Science and an MSc Mathematical Finance both from the University of Birmingham. His areas of interest are in the applications of machine learning, deep learning and alternative data for predictive modelling of financial markets.
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.
Has Bitcoin continued to correlate with equity index’s such as NASDAQ? Could that explain why it’s the only index with negative returns this week?