Domestic Bitcoin Transaction Monitoring Report in May: Bitcoin Market Cap Ratio Drops to Below 50%

Today, the National Internet Financial Security Technology Expert Committee released the "Domestic Bitcoin Transaction Monitoring Report in May" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report").

The report pointed out that from May 1 to May 31, the market value of Bitcoin increased from US$23.34 billion to US$37.48 billion, an increase of 60.6%, but the market value share of Bitcoin further decreased from 59.1% to 45.62%. In terms of transaction scale, the transaction volume in May increased significantly compared with the previous three months, which was four times the transaction volume in April. In terms of the distribution of transaction volume of trading platforms, among the more than 11 trading platforms tested, OKCoin, Bitcoin China and Huobi.com accounted for more than 80% in total.

The following is the full report:

Since its birth in 2009, Bitcoin has attracted great attention at home and abroad. An ecosystem has been formed around its generation, storage, transaction and application, and hundreds of encrypted digital currencies have emerged. As an important link in the Bitcoin ecological chain, the trading of Bitcoin in RMB in the secondary trading market is very active. The National Internet Financial Risk Analysis Technology Platform has monitored Bitcoin transactions and formed this report.

1. Bitcoin Market Value Monitoring

From May 1 to May 31, 2017, the market value of Bitcoin increased from US$23.34 billion to US$37.48 billion, an increase of 60.6%. For a long time, Bitcoin has dominated hundreds of virtual digital currencies in the world, as reflected in its market value, which has long accounted for about 90% of the total market value of virtual digital currencies. However, the market value growth of other currencies has recently been much higher than that of Bitcoin, especially Ethereum (market value increased from US$7.31 billion to US$21.32 billion, an increase of 191.6%) and Ripple (market value increased from US$1.96 billion to US$9.28 billion, an increase of 373.5%), which has led to a rapid decline in the market value of Bitcoin. The monitoring results show that from May 1 to May 31, the market value share of Bitcoin further decreased from 59.1% to 45.62%. Figure 1 shows the trend of the market value of Bitcoin and its market value share.

Figure 1 Bitcoin market value and share trend

2. Transaction Scale Monitoring

By monitoring the trading situation of major domestic trading platforms, the domestic Bitcoin trading volume was 21.708 billion yuan from May 1 to May 31, 2017. This is a significant increase compared with the previous three months and is four times the transaction volume in April. Figure 2 shows the trend of domestic Bitcoin trading volume in recent months.

Figure 2 Trend of domestic Bitcoin transaction volume in 2017

Since entering May, the transaction price of Bitcoin has continued to rise. On May 10, the domestic transaction price of Bitcoin exceeded 10,000 yuan for the first time, and continued to rise in the following two weeks, breaking the highest price record continuously, and created a historical high price of 19,200 yuan on May 25. Figure 3 shows the trend of Bitcoin transaction price and turnover in May. It can be seen that the trend of turnover is basically consistent with the trend of transaction price.

Figure 3 Bitcoin transaction price and transaction volume trends

3. Trading volume distribution

By analyzing the transaction scale of various domestic trading platforms, OKCoin (31.3%), Bitcoin China (27.2%) and Huobi (25.1%) have the largest transaction volume, and the three platforms together account for more than 80%. The specific distribution is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 Distribution of transaction volume of domestic Bitcoin trading platforms

IV. Conclusion

Secondary market exchange transactions are an important part of the Bitcoin ecological chain, with many participating users and large transaction scale. At the same time, Bitcoin transactions are also accompanied by certain risks, including price fluctuations, market manipulation, information leakage, trading platform running away, etc. The National Internet Financial Risk Analysis Technology Platform will continue to monitor and analyze Bitcoin transactions.