1/ Ok, time for a mega data thread - something that I was working on for quite some time to wrap up 2019 in a nice fashion. First chart - cryptocurrency returns. Bitcoin returned nearly triple-digit gains as it rallied 87% in 2019; adding roughly $63 billion to the market cap 
2/ As is apparent from the chart below, prices of cryptocurrencies continued to be closely correlated in 2019.
3/ The table below, which examines cross-asset correlation in 2019, shows that the largest cryptocurrencies are all positively correlated with each other. Ethereum correlates the most with the other cryptocurrencies while BSV and Tezos the weakest.
4/ Now this is really interesting IMO. Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency whose correlation to other cryptocurrencies decreased in 2019. Correlation of EOS and TRON with other cryptocurrencies increased significantly in 2019 while the already low correlation of Tezos remained low
5/ 2019 was the first year when Bitcoin had a low but statistically significant positive correlation with gold. Ethereum also had a positive, although lower, correlation to gold in 2019. XRP was not correlated to gold in any way. Neither was negatively correlated to S&P 500.
6/ After ETH started the year as significantly more volatile than BTC, its standard deviation was much closer to that of BTC by the end of 2019. The volatility of both BTC and ETH was the highest in July when prices were rallying.
7/ If we zoom out all the way to 2017, it’s apparent that 2019’s volatility was still significantly lower than in late 2017 and early 2018.
8/ Cryptocurrency volumes on the spot markets hit a 9-month low in December based on The Block 22 index. The volume on legitimate exchanges was about $39.8 billion in December, which is down 68% from the yearly high of $124.2 billion in June.
9/ LMAX Digital, which has gone under the radar because it is primarily focused on institutional traders, has grown from 1% of market share in January to more than 10% in September. The volume on LMAX is now on par with Coinbase.
10/ The monthly volume of BitMEX’s flagship Bitcoin perpetual swap reached an all-time high in 2019. In both June and July, monthly volume surpassed $140 billion, which is about 33% higher than the previous high of $105.8 billion recorded in March 2018.
11/ The same trend can be observed with the options volume on Deribit. The volume of BTC and ETH combined reached $18.1 billion in June but has since fallen by 57% to $7.7 billion in December.
12/ Following its underwhelming start in late September, Bakkt has witnessed a significant (and sustained) increase in the trading volume of its physically-settled bitcoin futures, hitting around $60 million on Dec. 18.
13/ CME continues to dominate Bakkt in terms of volume and open interest. Bakkt’s average daily volume was 11.5% of CME’s in December and its open interest was only about 4.3% of CME’s.
14/ Despite eliminating the risk of losing funds in theft, the non-custodial exchanges have, so far, failed to gain traction, especially in comparison to their centralized counterparts. They have less than 0.5% of the volume recorded by the legitimate centralized exchanges
15/ Similarly to volume, web traffic on cryptocurrency exchanges has been steadily decreasing since June; dropping by 49% since.
16/ Coinbase, Binance, BitMEX drew more than 50% of the total traffic in December.
17/ Bitcoin had, by far, the highest amount of value settled — $673 billion in 2019. It’s followed by Ethereum ($133 billion), XRP ($53 billion).
18/ Bitcoin miners have generated $5 billion in revenue in 2019 — $4.89 billion from block subsidies and $146 million from transaction fees. This is down 5% from revenues of $5.26 billion in 2018.
19/ According to my rough estimation, gold production is about a 30 times larger industry than Bitcoin mining.
20/ If you want to get data insights like these on a daily basis and much more, subscribe to Genesis you cheap assholes theblockcrypto.com/genesis
