Crypto Index Tracker: Metaverse Fares Worst in Crypto Sell Off
- By Bilal Hafeez and Dalvir Mandara
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- 3 min read
Crypto markets have been relatively more stable of late, with bitcoin down only 1% over the past week. Certainly, Monday’s announcement of Elon Musk’s $44bn buyout of Twitter helped crypto. But now it’s the turn of the heavyweight US tech companies (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) to potentially influence crypto. They report earnings this week, and with crypto correlation high against NASDAQ, any surprises will set the tone for crypto in coming weeks.
As for the performance of our various indexes, they are all in the red (Charts 1 and 2). Our Metaverse Index is down the most at 6% followed by our Privacy Index at 5%. Our Smart Contract, DeFi, and Bitcoin indexes are all down between 1% and 2%.
- Smart Contract Platform Index: Terra (LUNA) is the only one to have made gains – it is up 7%. Avalanche (AVAX) is down the most at 6%. Ethereum (ETH) is down 2%.
- DeFi Index: Terra (LUNA) is up the most at 7% and Uniswap (UNI) is down the most at 7%.
- Metaverse Index: all constituents are in the red. Phantasma (SOUL) is down the most at 13% and The Sandbox (SAND) is down the least at 1%.
- Privacy Index: Zcash (ZEC) is up the most at 6% and Dusk Network (DUSK) is down the most at 9%.
- 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.