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CoinDesk Monthly Review, February 2020

Updated Aug 23, 2021, 8:49 p.m. Published Mar 11, 2020, 11:28 a.m.

CoinDesk Research takes a monthly look at metrics critical to crypto asset adoption, including bitcoin's digital gold narrative and fiat onramps, DeFi lending, criminal activity, enforcement, the bitcoin halving and the crypto assets with the best returns and lowest volatility for the month of February.

Bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative took a hit in February; as we cautioned in our January Monthly Review, those who saw positive correlations were thinking wishfully. We continue to look for secular trends and treat bitcoin and other crypto assets as a venture investment in a technology that is still experimental. Cash onramps are critical data collection points. In this presentation, we look at Binance, Cash App and Coinbase fiat onramps. We also update an earlier research note on crypto interest rates and adoption of DeFi lending, and its potential to make a break-out use case for ethereum, and look at “criminality” as a use case for crypto networks. Finally, we look ahead (and back) to bitcoin halving impacts, and show returns in bitcoin and other crypto assets for the month of February.

Galen Moore

Galen Moore is the content lead at Axelar, which is building interoperable Web3 infrastructure. He previously served as director of professional content at CoinDesk. In 2017, Galen started Token Report, a cryptocurrency investor newsletter and data service, covering the ICO market. Token Report was acquired in 2018. Prior to that, he was editor in chief at AmericanInno, a subsidiary of American City Business Journals. He has a masters in business studies from Northeastern University and a bachelors in English from Boston University.