Cryptocurrency Boom Continues and Bitcoin Shows Signs of ‘NFT Boom’
In February, the value of the two largest cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) continued to increase – BTC had a 4.4% increase and ETH’s value increased by 5.8%. The value of the third largest cryptocurrency – Build-and-Build (BNB) remained unchanged, although a small drop of 0.3% was observed anyway, according to Binance representative in Latvia Polina Brotjē.
The BTC value increased from EUR 21,116 at the beginning of February to EUR 22,064 at the end of the month.
This means that the total value of BTC has increased by 40% since the start of the year. However, it remains 65% below its all-time peak.
What is particularly interesting is that it is currently the smallest number of so-called Bitcoin whales (owning more than 1,000 BTC) observed in the last three years. According to available information, there are slightly more than 1,600 addresses with this number of BTC. The number of such “whales” peaked a year ago, when more than 2,100 addresses had at least 1,000 BTC on them.
Attention to the Bitcoin blockchain increased thanks to the BTC NFT equivalent – Ordinals.
By the end of February, more than 210,000 Ordinals had been formed in the BTC blockchain. This NFT functionality was formed in the blockchain thanks to system updates carried out in late 2021.
Right now there is a rapid rise of interest and many Ethereum network NFT collections, such as Bored Apes, have switched to the BTC blockchain. The rapid rise in popularity of Ordinals helped boost the popularity of the BTC blockchain. However, it has yet to affect the BTC price.
The price of ETH grew during the month by almost 6% and was EUR 1,536 at the end of February. In March, Ethereum plans to perform a system update. This will help bring 17 million ETH, which users had previously donated in exchange for interest, back into the system.
The update will ensure the switch of Ethereum to an energy-efficient algorithm. This can negatively affect the ETH price if a large volume of ETH is released for free trading at the same time.
BNB experienced very little changes in February – the peak price of this cryptocurrency was EUR 311 and the lowest was EUR 266.
In general, the crypto market is currently relatively calm. There is currently no notable or unexpected news that could affect the price in any meaningful way. Analysts’ predictions about the future of this market are somewhat controversial – some believe that a fall will probably come before growth, others are more optimistic and expect continued growth in the cryptocurrency market.
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