We have just released the CoinGecko 2019 Quarter 2 Cryptocurrency Report. This 46-page report gives an overview of the state of the cryptocurrency market and the major events that happened in the second quarter of 2019.

Shoutout to dapp.com and RSK for collaborating and contributing to this report.

CoinGecko’s Trust Score algorithm was created to address questionable trading volume reported by exchanges. If you are using CoinGecko now, you will see that exchanges show normalized trading volumes based on exchange traffic statistics and in-depth order book data.

With CoinGecko’s Trust Score, exchanges now have the incentive to be transparent and to empower users to make better-informed decisions.

The cryptocurrency exchange market has also grown significantly. A total of 302 exchanges – or 87% of all cryptocurrency exchanges tracked by CoinGecko, were added in the last 18 months throughout CoinGecko’s 5-year history.

Exchange hacks have also become increasingly sophisticated where even top exchanges such as Binance were not spared with 7,070 Bitcoin worth an equivalent of $40 million was stolen off the platform.

As users demand a more secure trading platform model, decentralized exchanges have risen in popularity as a way to combat the risks of centralized exchanges. 11.5% of exchanges tracked by CoinGecko are classified as decentralized exchanges, where users’ funds are not kept in a custodial manner.

Highlights from the CoinGecko Quarter 2 Report

As always, aside from the quarterly snapshot of market trends and insights, we’ve also included a number of notable highlights this quarter.

CoinGecko’s Trust Score

CoinGecko’s Trust Score algorithm was created to address questionable trading volume reported by exchanges. CoinGecko users are now presented with normalized trading volumes based on exchange traffic statistics and in-depth order book data.

With CoinGecko’s Trust Score, exchanges now have the incentive to be transparent and to empower users to make better-informed decisions.

Initial Exchange Offerings (IEO)

The IEO trend continued to grow throughout Q2, peaking in April with 34 IEOs and $109.9 million raised in a single month. Q2 was by far the most popular period for IEO with 66 out of 72 (91%) IEOs occurring during this period.

A total of $262 million was raised via IEOs in the first half of 2019. However, only 50% of IEOs were traded above their IEO price by the end of June 2019.

Facebook’s Libra Project

The crypto industry was given mainstream media attention when social media giant Facebook announced Libra, a global blockchain-powered payment system with a vision to “reinvent money and transform the global economy”.

We’ve summarized the content of the Libra whitepaper for your reading pleasure so that you can have a clearer understanding of what Libra is about.

Lightning Network

This report will also provide insights into the development of the Lightning Network this year. The Lightning Network is a second-layer solution built on top of the Bitcoin Network to allow cheap and instant Bitcoin payments.

The Lightning Network’s overall network capacity saw an 87% increase to over 1,100 BTC and its node count doubled to 4,576 by the end of Q2 2019. 2019 also brought about major updates and releases of different Lightning Network apps.

Free to Download

We welcome everyone to read and share this report. The full report can be downloaded via this link.

For questions and comments, do drop us an email at hello@coingecko.com. We would love to hear from you.