The cryptocurrency market is starting the new trading year on a positive note.
The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) is up 1.3% so far in 2023, with all six sector indexes in the positive, a reversal from the fourth quarter of last year, when the benchmark index fell 12% from September through Dec. 15.
“The overall market remains broadly stable, but is being accompanied by apathy among market participants,” Arcane Research, a digital asset analytics firm, wrote in a newsletter on Tuesday.
Lido DAO (LDO), the governance token for Lido Decentralized Autonomous Organization, won the trophy for being the best performing CMI so far in 2023.
According to data from CoinGecko, the price of the LDO token has risen 26% so far in 2023, rising from 95 cents at the end of 2022 to $1.20 on the third day of the new year. The increase comes after Ethereum developers announced on Dec. 8 that the network's next hard fork will take place in March.
LDO is one of 142 of the 163 assets in the CoinDesk Market Index that have increased in value so far in 2023, with 25 trading more than 5% higher than their closing price on the last day of 2022.
Runner-up JasmyCoin (JASMY), the token of a platform developing Internet of Things (IoT), has risen 20% so far in the new year, reversing a downward trend from the fourth quarter of 2022. Maple Finance's native MPL token has also seen an increase of about 15%.
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) have also performed strongly so far this year despite falling 0.4% and 0.8%, respectively, over the past 24 hours.
Bitcoin has been hovering between $16,000 and $17,000 for 19 consecutive days following a frightening 2022 that saw the largest cryptocurrency fall by 64%.
Looking at sector performance, the CoinDesk Market Index has seen broad gains in the first few days of the year, with the culture and entertainment sector up 5% through Tuesday, and the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector up nearly 4%.
Big losers in the new year included Aragon (ANT) and Civic (CVC), both of which fell 6% in 2023.
Adam Farthing, chief risk officer for Japan at cryptocurrency market maker B2C2, predicted that more crypto investors will seek “real-time, real-world applicability, rather than betting on hopes of future potential use cases.”
“We expect the winners in 2023 will be tokens that can demonstrate real-world, immediate, cash-generating use cases that are not dependent on future crypto market growth or upside,” Farthing wrote in a note on Tuesday.
