Year of 2022 has indeed been replete with all sorts of events. We are falling under the impression that it is probably one of the most woeful years on record. Is this actually true?
All the unwanted events of the past year, of course, shook the already volatile digital asset market. We could see once successful and popular crypto- and blockchain-related projects collapse after the market drawdown in May. Large investors slowly but steadily withdrew their funds from risky assets, among which is cryptocurrency. On top of that, numerous startups and blockchain projects were just not prepared for such a grave crisis, resulting in serious losses.
Nevertheless, a number of companies still managed to cope with the unfavorable market situation, in fact, they kept growing in such harsh conditions. Despite the fact that many coins and tokens have sunk considerably, this has not prevented average investors from investing in them. Thus, the crypto market carried on growing.
For this article, we take a look back at the past year, 2022, and recap what highlights it brought to the crypto community.
The Binance Almighty
Oddly enough, the number one on the list goes to the cryptocurrency exchange, the world’s most prosperous and by far the largest crypto marketplace in terms of trading volume, Binance. Throughout the past few years of its existence, the crypto exchange team worked to ensure that the company was able to penetrate almost every market available in the world. Nor have they sidestepped the U.S., where they opened a branch dubbed Binance US. According to analytical services, over the past year, Binance contributed to the trading of digital assets worth about $22 trillion. This figure is spectacular, by no means every exchange can be proud of such performance.
Similarweb analysts revealed that Binance attracted more than seventy million visits per month, nearly double the number of hits from its closest rival, Coinbase.
In addition, it purchased Japanese cryptocurrency platform Sakura Exchange BitCoin as well as Tokocrypto, an Indonesian firm, last year.
It would seem that the year would go pretty well, but December arrived along with an unexpected outflow of funds from the platform. A total of almost $2 billion was withdrawn from Binance overnight. Changpeng Zhao, head of the company, stated that he attributed the event to external factors. Yet this did not comfort investors, since the news about Mazars Proof of Reserves company deciding to suspend cooperation with the crypto exchange and several other customers later emerged.
Bankruptcy of FTX
You can’t help but recall one of the most headline news in the crypto industry in 2022 – the bankruptcy of FTX.
In an instant, one of the most popular crypto exchanges became obsolete. The story comes after CoinDesk reported on a leaked document on Nov. 2 stating that Alameda Research, the hedge fund run by Bankman-Fried, was holding an oddly large number of FTT tokens.
Eventually, the platform’s collateral collapsed from $60 billion to $9 billion in a matter of months.
Evolution of the Web3
Even though it was mostly negative news for much of the past year, it did not hinder the development of Web 3.0. Things never stand still and keep getting better. Although the hype surrounding NFT and metaverses subsided, they make progress, meaning that Web3 is not going anywhere, for a reason they call it the “the Future of the Internet.”
CoinShares
One of the largest cryptocurrency investing companies in the European space, CoinShares is a leading player in crypto market with billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency under its control. Among the company’s clients is mostly the social elite, who have great opportunities for investing in digital currency at their disposal. As of today, CoinShares operates several offices located in cities such as Jersey, New York, London, Stockholm and Paris.
Over the past year, the company has seen quite a turnaround, with a noticeable increase in its assets. As stated by representatives of CoinShares, toward the end of the year their assets spiked as much as $25 million. Such an uptick appeared to be a pleasant surprise for both the executives and the crypto community at large, as the industry was basically in a downtrend.
Conclusion
Previous year was a truly a challenge and a test of the consistency of the crypto market. Many lessons have been learned so far that will make crypto companies more resilient in the future. No doubt there were plenty of other events we didn’t cover in the article, such as the trial between Ripple and the SEC, the Terra Stablecoin crash, crypto winter, etc. Instead, we decided to capture the main events that hit the market the most.
What the events of 2022 have also made clear is that some techniques as the leverage trading can be risky and can lead to dramatic losses due to unexpected market movements.
Likewise, 2022 proved that the crypto industry can offer a wide range of groundbreaking financial technologies and investment opportunities in a way that keeps engaging different types of investors.
But we believe that the coming year of 2023 will be an eventful one and will not cease to amaze us only with delightful events.