We conclude the first quarter of 2023 as March draws to a close. Our January and February market recaps were filled with memorable headlines — March is no exception. The market has been highly volatile since the start of the month with the collapse of multiple centralized financial institutions, lawsuits against crypto exchanges, and the hype around the ARB airdrop. Let’s take a deep dive to explore the key narratives of the past month.
TL;DR
The market has been difficult in March due to the streak of problems such as the fall of traditional banks and various lawsuits against crypto exchanges. As a result, the top 10 gainers only saw relatively small gains compared to the previous months.
Specifically, CFX continued to lead the race as the biggest winner for two consecutive months with a near triple-digit return. MASK followed at a close second with a gain of almost 67%. Apart from that, XDC and XRP rose mostly due to their involvement in product and legal cases respectively. The rest of the top 10 gainers are beneficiaries of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) fallout as crypto investors shifted towards safer large-cap crypto assets.
Conflux (CFX)
Claiming the number one top spot in this month after being the top performer in February, CFX saw a rise of about 88.95% in March and almost 17× since the start of the year. Conflux’s growth has been mostly driven by US regulatory lawsuits that further push the Hong Kong narrative. Conflux has also launched partnerships with more traditional companies, such as XCMG — the third largest construction machinery manufacturer in the world, to further increase the adoption of its blockchain. Conflux has been involved with building blockchain-based SIM (BSIM) cards with China Telecom, the second-largest wireless carrier in China with an estimated 390M subscribers. The pilot program will be launched in Hong Kong later this year before expanding to key mainland China states such as Shanghai. The BSIM card is expected to lower the barriers to entry for users who are unfamiliar with crypto keys, making it easier for them to access Web3 and Metaverse applications. The card provides security and convenience for users and has more storage capacity and computation power than a traditional SIM card. While the know-your-customer (KYC) processes required in some regions may compromise privacy, this could also allow such crypto wallets to be more compliant with Chinese regulations. Conflux Network claims to be the only regulatory-compliant blockchain in China and will likely play a huge role in helping Hong Kong and mainland China expand their Web3 industry.
It has received US$10M in funding from DWF labs and continues to form partnerships beyond its BSIM card initiative. Apart from the XCMG, Conflux has also partnered with Zen Spark Technology, a Singapore-based fintech company, to explore the potential of blockchain and Web3 technologies for international use cases. XCMG plans to leverage the partnership to jointly issue its first non-fungible token (NFT) collection for overseas markets in the near future. Furthermore, Conflux provides grants for the incubation of decentralized applications (dApps) in order to promote the growth of its ecosystem.
Mask Network (MASK)
Following closely as the runner-up, Mask Network is a browser extension that can be used on top of Twitter to enhance privacy and provide additional features. Some of the product features include the encryption of tweets viewable only to selected users, Initial Twitter Offering (ITO), where users can swap their MASK tokens for the newly launched tokens on Mask’s ITO, and viewing pricing data directly on Twitter. Specifically, trading is supported by routing orders through Uniswap, SushiSwap, and 0x.
In addition, Mask also includes many other NFT-related products such as NFT verification, gifting of NFT to friends, and direct purchasing NFTs from marketplaces such as OpenSea and Rarible while still being on Twitter.
MASK saw a large 395% pump in November 2022 within 7 days of Elon Musk’s announcement of the Twitter acquisition and the roadmap to integrate MASK into Twitter. Shortly after, Binance added MASK to its Bluebird Index which has been traded on the exchange ever since.
This new wave of bull rally in March was likely due to Binance’s announcement of including MASK as part of its proof-of-reserves on 7 March. Fundamentally, the project has also gained significant traction since its initial pump. From 1 November to 29 March, the number of MASK holders increased by 36.2%, going from 30.1K to 40K. Monthly transactions also saw a spike and hit an all-time high (ATH) of 20.3K.
XDC Network (XDC)
In February 2023, the co-founder of XDC Network drafted a plan to decentralize the ecosystem’s development, allowing the yearly 160M XDC to be distributed according to on-chain community votes. The XDC narrative seemed to be driven by the ETHDubai event and the messaging standard ISO20022. Majority of the XDC gains came during and after the ETHDubai event that XDC Network participated in, rallying 31.7% from 15 to 20 March.
At the same time, there was another narrative on Twitter surrounding the ISO20022 messaging standard which went live on 20 March. It aims to bring frictionless and instant settlement for all the banks that have adopted this system globally. Some suspect that XDC Network was included in the narrative since it is a payment channel. However, the XDC pump was not driven by this as the other tokens riding on this narrative did not see any price spike, as seen below.
XRP (XRP)
XRP pumped on the narrative that its long-standing lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) might be soon concluding. Some sources even cited that market consensus expects Ripple to win the case by the end of March 2023. The main driver for this narrative was the SEC’s removal of Patrick Doody, who has been acting as the SEC’s primary witness. The expectation seemed to be that without Doody as the primary witness, the SEC’s argument of XRP being an unregistered security might fall flat…
Enjoyed this? Read the full market recap here, where we elaborate on the rise of XRP’s social dominance, both blue chip and altcoins that benefited from the SVB fallout, and a continuation of the Stacks narrative from last month.
Disclaimer
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