Crypto lost more than half its value in 2022

The Coingecko 2022 industry report stated that crypto lost more than half its value, but consolidated, with BTC and ETH seeing a steady growth in addresses.

Although acknowledging that the crypto bubble had burst in 2022, the Coingecko 2022 industry report affirmed that the “excesses” from the last bull market had been flushed out. Bobby Ong, COO and co-founder of Coingecko said:

“2022 marked a turning point for the crypto industry – one that flushed out unsustainable excesses from the bull run. In this new year, we hope to see crypto slowly make a recovery, with more efforts going towards rebuilding trust and credibility.”

Market cap

The report highlighted several areas of the crypto market, and began by noting that the market had begun the year at $2.3 trillion, but had fallen below $1 trillion by Q2. The second half of the year saw sideways movement as crypto consolidated down to $829 million, losing more than 64% of total market cap for the year.

Stablecoins

Stablecoins increased dominance as investors looked for safer havens, with the exception of when Terra Luna collapsed, which saw a $27.3 million stablecoin outflow. Since that time, stablecoins have shown more resilience.

Bitcoin

During the year, Bitcoin performed the worst against all other asset classes. Its 64.2% loss was almost double that of the Nasdaq, and more than three times the S&P 500.

ETH staking

As the bear market progressed, ETH staking grew from 8.8 million ETH staked the previous year, to 15.8 million by the end of 2022, perhaps in anticipation of the Shanghai upgrade expected in March this year.

DeFi

The DeFi market cap shrank by 72.9%, with protocols such as Convex Finance (CVX) and Alchemix (ALCX) losing up to 95%. The derivatives niche saw far more activity and surpassed yield aggregators by market share.

NFTs

In the NFT market, OpenSea was able to maintain its dominance over other NFT marketplaces with 65.4% of trading volume. The Solana-based Magic Eden ate into the dominance by rising to a 12.5% share. With wash trading becoming a concern, NFT creator royalties shrank by 94.9%.

Spot trading

Spot trading decreased over the year, and reached a low point in December of $0.46 trillion. Down from $1.5 trillion at the start of the year. Despite the FTX collapse, centralised exchanges still accounted for 92.5% of all trading volume. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.