A look back at 2022: An Unforgettable Year for Crypto

A look back at 2022: An Unforgettable Year for Crypto

Author: Rakshita Jain

25-Sept-2023

Hi Crypto Enthusiasts, Advocates, and Evangelists!

It is that time of the year again when we sit and think about all the crucial things we have done, witnessed, missed, or achieved this year.

And this annual review for any crypto lover can not be complete without reminiscing about crypto for a while.

Thus, below, we created a crypto memory lane for you to remember, rejoice and retrospect this year for cryptocurrencies.

Let's begin the look back on a positive note by remembering all the outstanding moments that gave some investors tears of joy for a while.

Top Hikes of 2022

DOGECOIN price more than doubled after Elon Musk took control of Twitter. The meme coin surged from $0.07 to $0.16 within only five days in October. In April too, when the news of Elon Musk owning a 9.2% stake on Twitter broke, Dogecoin surged 40% in three weeks. Though the coin is almost 90% down from its ATH of $0.73, its investors enjoyed a few exciting moments this year.

In June, POLYGON witnessed a surprising price jump of 60% in only four days when its price climbed from $0.317 to $0.50. This hike started because of some big investors' heavy accumulation of MATIC. Polygon is currently 72.73% below its ATH.

On the second Sunday of August, the price of SHIBA INU rose 30% from $0.00001516 to $0.00001774 at mid-day. SHIBA experienced this surge due to a new SHIBA focussed game, Shiba Eternity.

In September, the rumour that the long-ending legal battle between SEC and Ripple is about to end credited an increment of 44% in XRP in only seven days. Ripple is currently trading at almost 90% below its ATH.

Unexpectedly, the price of Ethereum Classic (ETC) boosted by 28% only on September 6. This price movement occurred because the ETH miners were rapidly shifting to ETC since ETH was about to shift from a mining-based consensus mechanism to a staking-based consensus mechanism.

A Crypto punk #4464 NFT sold out for 2500 ETH, making it a $2.6 million deal.

All these tiny bullish moments made this strongly bearish year a little bearable for investors and traders.

Apart from price surges, if we talk about Crypto adoption, this year has been great for it.

Here are some key highlights regarding crypto adoption, HOLDing, and overall growth from the Crypto industry.

Top Crypto Adoption News of 2022

One of the biggest Bitcoin advocates, Michael Saylor, continued his Bitcoin shopping in 2022. By the June end, he bought 480 more BTC for $10 million, making the total BTC count owned by his company, Microstrategy, 1,29,699. In the last quarter of the year, the company sold out its 704 BTC. However, it soon recovered this sellout by adding another 2501 BTC to its holding by spending $44.6 million in the last 2 months. After this purchase, Microstrategy now owns a net total of 1,32,500 BTC, making it one of the most powerful bitcoin whales.

The Central African Republic became the second country to make Bitcoin a legal tender on April 27 2022, after El Salvador.

Gold correlation with Bitcoin, which generally fluctuates between -0.2 to 0.2, increased to 0.3 this year. This increased relationship can mean investors have started considering Bitcoin a safe investment like Gold.

Polkadot recorded an ATH activity in September. The contribution of its developers recorded more activity than any other network.

The famous American state of Colorado started accepting cryptocurrency as an additional payment method for all state taxpayers. Now its citizens can pay multiple taxes like income tax, business income tax, withholding tax, severance tax, and fuel tax in Crypto.

Brazil approved the bill to allow Crypto as a payment method on December 22 2022.

JP Morgan executed its first-ever cross-border transaction with the help of the Polygon MATIC blockchain. It also announced in May that it is bullish on cryptocurrencies. The American bank also announced that it is registering a trademark for a new cryptocurrency wallet.

Famous brands like Starbucks, Meta, Adidas & Adobe chose MATIC as their blockchain partner this year.

Since Crypto is an evolving field, new updates also keep pouring in.
Below are some most important crypto updates from this year.

Top Crypto Updates of 2022

The most awaited upgrade of Ethereum, “the Merge,” was completed this year on September 15. This upgrade switched Ethereum from a Proof of Work to a Proof of stake consensus mechanism. It reduced the energy consumption of Ethereum by 99.9%.

Cardano also completed its Vasil hard fork upgrade on September 23 2022. This hard fork made the Cardano network more suitable for building dApps, NFTs, and DeFi products. It will also reduce Cardano’s network congestion and fees and increase scalability.

After the collapse, the Terra network underwent a forking to eliminate the concept of algorithmic stablecoins. This event made the old Terra chain Terra Classic (LUNC) and the new chain Terra (LUNA). The new LUNA coins were air-dropped to the older Luna Classic and Terra USD.

Apart from all these events in the Crypto biome, some unexpected and brutal disasters also happened this year that sometimes contributed to painting the market red.

Top Mishaps of 2022

Terra LUNA collapse was the first black swan event the crypto industry experienced this year. The two algorithmic stablecoins of the Terra blockchain crashed when their Anchor protocol changed its interest rates, and investors started withdrawing their Terra USD (UST) holdings from it to convert that to LUNA. This conversion to LUNA in bulk made the algorithm between Terra USD and LUNA break leading to a free fall of both currency prices.

The collapse of the Terra ecosystem triggered a ripple effect for various crypto institutions. The panic caused by the sudden fall of the Terra empire made other investors withdraw their funds from the crypto lender, Celsius. It led Celsius to fall into a liquidity crisis, owing Celsius to halt the withdrawal and transfer services. It finally declared bankruptcy owing its investors $2.5 million worth of funds.

Another major incident that affected the crypto industry was the fall of a popular crypto hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital (3AC). Since 3 AC had borrowed millions of dollars from various other platforms like Terra, Voyager, and Celsius, which all filed for bankruptcy, 3AC also had to follow the same path after facing financial instability.

The popular Play-to-Earn game, Axie Infinity, got hacked in March, allowing its hackers to steal $620 Million worth of crypto assets by exploiting its Ronin blockchain. The hack took place through social engineering in the form of a fake job offer to a senior engineer. The PDF involved in the hiring process had spyware instilled in them. As a result, the hackers got the fund access of Axie Infinity and stole 173,600 ETH and 26 million USDC.

The final nail in the coffin for the crypto collapse this year was the collapse of the FTX Crypto exchange. A news report revealed that FTX has been executing risky trades using customer funds through its alliance crypto lending firm, Almeda Research. The revelation, accompanied by some other Tweets, caused severe panic among the crypto investors using FTX. As a result, the investors rushed to withdraw their funds from FTX, causing a shortage of funds at FTX. And since the FTX CEO had already sent and lost the majority of FTX funds, the crypto exchange could not meet the withdrawal demand and halted operations. Then its native FTT token fell 92% in a week, and the platform filed for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022. However, this was not the end of its woes for FTX as it got hit by a mystery attack draining $640 million worth of its crypto funds.

BlockFi and its downfall were directly related to the FTX collapse because it had signed a credit agreement of $400 million with FTX a few months back. Hence, when FTX declared bankruptcy, the line of credit for BlockFi also closed, forcing it to fall short of funds. Eventually, it also filed for bankruptcy within a few days post-FTX collapse.