even stablecoins are down- The Cryptonomist

Renowned crypto aggregator CoinGecko has released its quarterly report on the second quarter of 2022.

CoinGecko report: stablecoins are down

Amid the various key points, the report highlights the fact that stablecoins also suffered losses in the quarter ended 30 June, particularly in their overall market capitalization. 

Indeed, in three months the overall market capitalization of dollar-pegged stablecoins fell by 18%, a drop of $34 billion. 

Much of this decline is obviously due to the demise of UST, now USTC, which burned through over $18 billion in one fell swoop. However, the decline overall also occurred in the other stablecoins, with USDT for example falling from $83 billion to $66 billion. USDC, on the other hand, fell from $51 billion to $55 billion. 

This decrease suggests that some capital has for all intents and purposes flowed out of the crypto markets, whereas in the first quarter investors had reduced risk precisely by buying stablecoins. 

Of course, the single most notable event in the quarter was the implosion of the Terra ecosystem, which also contaminated bETH and stETH.

The other major event was the blocking of Celsius withdrawals, and the failure of first 3AC and then Voyager. DeFi protocols such as Maple Finance also suffered major losses due to this contagion. 

The implosion of Terra triggered a cascading sequence of problems that caused major damage to the crypto ecosystem. For example, the total TVL of DeFi protocols plummeted 55% during the quarter.

Much of the market capitalization of DeFi tokens was wiped out due to the collapse of Luna and UST, with the Terra ecosystem protocols literally wiped out, along with those that supported these assets. 

Moreover, exploits to DeFi protocols have also increased, affecting projects such as Inverse and Rari. 

Trading volume on DEXs also dropped a lot, by 38.6%. Uniswap is still the dominant DEX, but Curve experienced the largest quarterly growth. In particular, the report notes that DEXs on Solana and BNB Chain increased or maintained their relative market share. 

Finally, the NFT market also suffered, with OpenSea’s share dropping from 59% to 42%, and competitors Magic Eden and X2Y2 gaining ground due mainly to its integration with Solana. 

Overall, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies in the second quarter of 2022 fell below $1 trillion, a 50% drop from the closing figure of the first quarter.