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With the crypto market on a tremendous bullish run, several assets, especially altcoins, have been recording massive price gains. MATIC, an ERC-20 token and native cryptocurrency of the Polygon network, has been one of the tokens in the mix of this action, gaining by 49.33% since the beginning of 2023.
MATIC’s price growth has been consistent, making it one of the best-performing tokens of 2023. In the last 72 hours, data from CoinMarketCap shows that the token has rallied by 20.43%, with its market price moving from $0.93 to its current value of $1.12.
While there are many possible explanations for this impressive price increase, Santiment, a popular on-chain analytics firm, has presented quite an interesting report.
Via their official Twitter account, Santiment reports that on the morning of Jan. 25, just before MATIC embarked on its current price rally, the Polygon network recorded a transfer of 59 million MATIC tokens worth $56 million between two wallets, marking the crypto asset’s biggest whale transaction so far in 2023.
According to Santiment, this massive asset movement is the main reason why Polygon’s native coin has surged in value over the last few days.
They tweeted saying:
“On Wednesday, the largest $MATIC transfer of the year occurred just prior to this +20% pump. This address had already been holding 585k #Ethereum as well. Often times, just one or a few whale addresses is all it takes, like in this #Polygon example”.
At the time of writing, MATIC has gone up by 2.86% in the last 24 hours, trading at $1.12, with a daily trading volume of $842.36 million. Based on more data from CoinMarketCap, the crypto token remains the 10th biggest cryptocurrency, with a total market cap of $9.75 billion.
MATIC trading at $1.1211 | Source: MATICUSD Chart on Tradingview.com
What Else Could Be Behind MATIC’s Price Rise?
Aside from the report from Santiment, another possible cause for MATIC’s price increase is the high level of anticipation surrounding the roll-out of the zkEVM network update.
According to a tweet by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal on January 16, the launch of the zkEVM Mainnet is expected soon, with a date already picked – although awaiting the public announcement.
The zkEVM network update is expected to enable the Polygon network to become compatible with all smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum chain. This excites the entire Polygon community as the existing Zk-rollups in the network cannot execute some complex operations required for the efficient operations of some Ethereum-based smart contracts.
MATIC Price Prediction For 2023
According to the 2023 price predictions by DigitalCoinPrice, MATIC could trade as high as $2.46 before the year runs out, indicating a plausible 119.64% increase from its current market price.
Bitnation, another highly-rated prediction site, is also predicting positive price growth for MATIC in 2023. Based on their price forecasts, the ERC-20 token is expected to attain a peak price of $2.02 before the end of the year.
That said, it is worth stating that these predictions are not set in stone, and MATIC could as well have a rather turbulent year. It is advisable for investors to conduct extensive research and consult financial market experts before making any investment decision.
