The crypto market entered a cold winter in Q3: mining revenue dropped by nearly half compared to Q1, and 58% of investors believe that Bitcoin ETF will be available next year

Bianews reported that Coindesk recently released a more than 200-page 2018 Q3 crypto industry report. The report pointed out that the market value of the cryptocurrency market decreased from US$243 billion to US$215 billion in the third quarter of 2018, a decrease of 11%.

Of this, BTC accounts for $114 billion and ETH accounts for $24 billion.

In addition, the report also analyzes multiple types of data such as cryptocurrency market prices, networks, social attention, market interest, investors, etc. Bianews compiled this report and summarized the excerpts as follows:

BTC mining revenue increased by 14%, while ETH shrank by 55%

Statistics show that the transaction volume of the entire crypto market fluctuated in the third quarter, reaching a peak of nearly $10 billion in late August and early September, with about 80% of transactions being BTC. However, EOS had the largest number of transactions.

In terms of computing power, BTC has fluctuated from 40 million TH/s to nearly 60 million TH/s.

Bitcoin hashrate growth slowed, falling from 94% at the beginning of the year to 52% and 45% in the next two quarters.

Bitcoin miners' revenue increased slightly from the second quarter, but dropped by nearly half from the first quarter.

But overall, in the third quarter, although the revenue of Bitcoin mining companies fluctuated, it increased by 14% overall to US$14 million.

The number of Ethereum transactions fell by 23% in the third quarter.

Ethereum mining enterprise revenue shrank 55% in the third quarter to $490,000.

BTC transaction volume decreased by 16%, while EOS increased by 33%

According to Coindesk statistics, the daily trading volume of the entire crypto market reached a peak on September 23 this year, exceeding $14 billion. Among them, Bitcoin trading volume still accounted for the largest proportion, about 60%, but by the end of the third quarter, the proportion had dropped to nearly 40%.

Data shows that Bitcoin trading volume fell 16% in the third quarter of 2018, with daily trading volume falling from around US$4.8 billion to around US$4 billion.

Since the first quarter of this year, Bitcoin trading volume has been difficult to achieve month-on-month growth, especially in February this year, when the decline reached its maximum of 45%. It was followed by negative growth in April, May and July, but fell back to negative growth in the last two months of the third quarter. As of the third quarter of 2018, Bitcoin's quarterly trading volume fell to US$40.3 billion.

Ethereum’s daily transaction volume increased in the third quarter, rising 17% from $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion.

After falling 33% in the second quarter, Ethereum’s monthly transaction volume returned to a month-on-month growth trend in the third quarter, increasing by 12% at the close of September.

Judging from the quarterly trading performance summarized by Coindesk, Ethereum experienced negative growth of -34% and -21% in the second and third quarters of 2018 respectively.

EOS daily transaction volume grew 33% in the third quarter, from $622 million to $828 million.

However, EOS’ quarterly transaction volume declined. After growing to $12.3 billion in the second quarter, it fell 49% to $6.3 billion in the third quarter. Although the total volume exceeded the third and fourth quarters at the end of 2017, it was $3 billion lower than the first quarter of 2018.

Reddit users pay the most attention to BTC

Twitter users follow XRP and BCH the most

Coindesk also summarized and listed the popularity of topics related to the crypto market on major social platforms in the third quarter.

In the third quarter, Reddit users were still most concerned about BTC, with posts and discussions accounting for 38% of the total number of posts in the crypto market, and the second largest cryptocurrency after BTC was Tron XRP.

In terms of active subscribers, the most people follow BTC, followed by BCH and ETH in third place.

However, the enthusiasm of public discussion has also declined with the arrival of the bear market, with EOS seeing the biggest decline.

Interestingly, followers on Twitter present a different picture.

Among the fans who follow the crypto market on Twitter, the most follow XRP and BCH, both accounting for 36%, followed by ETH at 17%, and the least follow BTC at only 3%.

In addition, in the statistics of users' likes on the Facebook platform, XRP received the most attention, with 46% of likes, while BTC received 36%.

In terms of technology, users are interested in BTC and ETH

On GitHub, the largest number of contributors offer suggestions to BTC, accounting for 36%, followed by BCH, accounting for 29%, and the least is XRP, accounting for 4%.

From the perspective of actual contributions and code submissions, EOS is the most relevant, accounting for 35%, while XRP is almost non-existent.

In addition, GitHub has the "star" and "fork" function options. When users click "star", it means they like the project, pay attention to it and give encouragement. When users click "fork", they can modify and submit the project based on the original project.

Coindesk's report includes data statistics on users' "star" and "fork" actions on cryptocurrency projects, which can more truly reflect user preferences and participation.

BTC-related code projects received 51% of the "stars", Ethereum had 30%, and BCH had the least, only 1%.

At the same time, BTC-related code projects were the most "forked", accounting for 65%.

In addition, ETH has the most public issues on GitHub, followed by BTC, accounting for 34% and 33% respectively.

It can be seen that in terms of technical solutions, users' interest is mainly concentrated on BTC and ETH.

Initial Coin Offerings Slump

1CO activities remained active in the third quarter, with a total of 189 projects conducting 1CO, a decrease from 192 in the second quarter. It is worth noting that the total fundraising scale of 1CO in the third quarter reached US$2.23 billion, less than one-third of the second quarter (US$7.286 billion).

1CO monthly analysis data shows that the scale of 1CO in September reached the lowest level so far this year, raising a total of US$530 million.

Venture capital investment reached the highest level in the past two years

The scale of blockchain venture capital investment in the third quarter increased from the second quarter to US$974 million, reaching the highest level since 2017.

Judging from the monthly data, the amount of venture capital obtained by blockchain and crypto-related companies in the past three months has fluctuated around US$300 million.

58% of investors believe a Bitcoin ETF will be approved within the next year

The report also lists the results of a questionnaire survey of people in the blockchain industry, including corporate executives, investors, cryptocurrency companies, blockchain technology service providers, etc.

The survey results showed that 58% of investors believed that cryptocurrencies were undervalued at the end of the third quarter.

28% of respondents said they had never participated in or wanted to participate in an ICO.

Among blockchain applications, 26% of investors are optimistic about decentralized exchanges, followed by asset management and privacy transactions.

40% of respondents believe that the use of cryptocurrencies in the business sector will increase in 2018.

More than 70% of investors have never used cryptocurrencies for payment; 32% of investors said they would store most of their crypto assets in cold wallets, 23% chose to keep them in exchanges, and 14% said they would keep them in hot wallets.

58% of investors believe that a Bitcoin ETF will be approved within the next year.