The total cryptocurrency market capitalization fell by 8% in June, dropping to approximately $2.25 trillion, erasing most of the gains seen in May, according to a JPMorgan research report released on Monday.
“Tokens, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) all experienced market cap contraction in June,” analyst Kenneth Worthington wrote.
This decline contrasts sharply with traditional markets, where the S&P 500 index rose by 4% and the Nasdaq, known for its technology focus, climbed by 6%, JPMorgan noted. The CoinDesk 20 index {{CD20}} saw a nearly 20% drop in June.
Despite the broader downturn in the digital assets sector, stablecoins outperformed the rest of the crypto ecosystem, maintaining a flat to slightly higher market cap, driven primarily by tether {{USDT}}, the report said.
Bitcoin miners also bucked the trend. The total market cap of publicly listed bitcoin {{BTC}} miners increased by 19%, benefiting from gains related to “artificial intelligence-related power use cases.” Core Scientific (CORZ) recently signed a 12-year, 200 megawatt (MW) agreement with cloud computing firm CoreWeave to provide AI-related infrastructure, prompting a sector re-rating and a surge of mergers and acquisitions.
The report highlighted a significant drop in daily spot crypto trading volumes, which fell by up to 18% compared to the previous month. “It now appears that March 2024 marked the peak for the crypto ecosystem in the current cycle, both in terms of valuation and volume,” JPMorgan added.
Furthermore, spot bitcoin ETFs experienced their second-worst month since their inception, with the 10 U.S. spot ETFs collectively seeing $662 million in sales over the month.
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