This year has not been favorable to the price actions of neither bitcoin (BTC) nor ether (ETH), the two major cryptocurrencies by market cap. Bitcoin started out this year trading at $47,370 but has since then fallen to $38,945 at press time. Looking at ether, the story is the same, or even worse as the ether token started out at $3,730 on the 1st of January and is now trading at $2.580.
Both of the major cryptocurrencies have seen short retakes above $40,000 and $3,000 respectively, but the year so far looks bearish nevertheless. This moody sentiment has had its toll on the trading volumes for both major cryptocurrencies.
150 times increase in trading volume in a year
Zooming out, the past year has seen major changes in trading interest, according to data provided by crypto analysts Santiment. It’s beyond doubt that Terra’s LUNA and Solana’s SOL tokens have established themselves as top ten market cap assets with very high trading volume, but this seems to have come to the expense of trading volumes for bitcoin and ether.
Starting with Solana, a year ago the SOL token was trading at $14.5 with a trading volume of just $94.7 million per day. A year ago, Solana’s market cap ranked the token at around number 32, and today the token is ranked number eight. At the present moment the SOL token is trading at $80.6, peaking thus far at over $250 on the 7th of November last year, but the trading volume is now at close to $1.5 billion a day. That’s roughly a 150 times increase in trading volume in a year.
Terra’s LUNA token has seen some similar actions. A year ago, the LUNA token was trading at $16 with a trading volume at just over $1 billion a day, and a total market cap rendering the LUNA token a rank around number 25. Today, the LUNA token is trading at $92.3, which is not far from the tokens all-time-high at just over $103 set last week. In the past year, the LUNA token has risen to number seven in market cap, and the trading volume is now at $2.8 billion a day.
Bitcoin’s trading volume down to a third
Meanwhile, the trading volumes of bitcoin and ether have been falling over the past year. And quite significantly so. A year ago bitcoin price was at $60,000 with a trading volume at $60.25 billion a day. The trading volume has since decreased to around $21 billion peaking at over $126 billion in mid-May last year. That’s merely a ⅓ of the trading volume a year ago, and just 17% of the trading volume at the peak in May last year.
Ether’s trading volume was at $24.5 billion a year ago and has since fallen to around $10.5 billion a day today. Ether also saw a peak in mid-May last year with a trading volume at $84.5 billion. Thus ether’s trading volume is down to less than half (42%) of what it was a year ago, and down to just 12% from the peak in mid-May.
The conclusion seems to be that the interest of the market, as reflected by trading volume, is following potential trading profits. Tokens, even the biggest ones, receive less interest during bear markets, while tokens with lesser market caps draw attention by having greater growth potential as prices go up.
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