2022 May Be The Worst Year For Cryptos

The crypto sector is undergoing a massive bearish push, which drove almost all of the top-100 projects to see levels, not seen in five years. What started as a fairytale for crypto enthusiasts is now turning into a massive blow to their portfolios.

Historically, cryptos have performed the best in November 2021, when the total crypto market capitalization was just inches away from $3 million. Now, two-thirds of the amount evaporated, leaving the sector seriously wounded.

The year started with predictions that Bitcoin would easily hit $100,000 per BTC, but the plans and models did not live up to their name, as just six months into 2022, the leading crypto is struggling to float above $20,000.

Source: CryptoBrowser

And despite cryptos feeling the pressure just yet, the DeFi and NFT sectors fell victim first after OpenSea’s exploit, which saw several high-cost NFTs leaving the marketplace to unknown wallets. Since the exploit, transaction volumes for NFTs have fallen by over 50% with over half of NFT investors still waiting to make a profit from their investments.

And while the entire crypto sector was managing to withstand the tides of bearish price action, observed on traditional markets due to inflation and interest rate hikes, TerraUSD (UST), the third-largest stablecoin, de-pegged from the dollar.

Other projects also helped in the havoc

The de-pegging caused the entire Terra ecosystem to collapse, leaving many investors with billions of dollars in losses. However, it was Celsius Network that added salt to the crypto wound by announcing that it was pausing all withdrawals due to “extreme market conditions.” Shortly after the announcement, the crypto market revisited the long-forgotten $1 trillion in market cap, with Bitcoin falling to an 18-month low of $22,000.

Hackers also did their fair share of havoc in the first few months of 2022, as in the first quarter alone, hackers lost over $1.22 billion via DeFi exploits, which is eight times what they lost in the same period.

“As DeFi gets bigger and bigger, these kinds of attacks become more and more lucrative,” Mitchell Amador, CEO of Immunefi noted.

Cryptos face mixed opinions about future price action

Despite the market turmoil, crypto enthusiasts are still seeing the light in the tunnel when it comes to crypto trend reversals, as Delta’s Kavita Gupta claims that she “strongly believes that we’ve not seen the bottom yet”, and that $14K to $16K might be the ideal bottom.

Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd went a bit further, calling out a bottom of $8,000 for the world’s largest crypto to date.

Nevertheless, optimists are believing that regulatory changes might serve as a catalyst for a Bitcoin trend reversal since a recent bill by Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand saw a massive agreement from crypto players. Also, the world is still waiting on the SEC to approve a spot Bitcoin ETF, which could potentially bring more and more traditional investors with an indirect exposure to cryptos.