main conclusions
Cryptocurrency has been crushed across the board, with all top 10 coins being hammered LUNA was the worst as death reached near zero in May Solana has lost 92% of its value this year, falling from the third largest cryptocurrency to the sixteenth. top three performers were BNB, XRP and Dogecoin but still down 56%+ Bitcoin down 64% and Ethereum down 67% 2022. What a year. In the crypto markets, it’s safe to say it wasn’t one of the best. The world has transitioned to a new interest rate paradigm, with markets realizing how much of the crypto space has been predicted to be over-leveraged at cheap rates. That cheap credit ran out and the liquidity rug was pulled out, with market prices collapsing as a result. Add some scandals – FTX, LUNA and Celsius, to name a few – and the absolutely torrid markets. In this article, we look at the top 10 coins from the start of the year.
2022 seems a long time ago now
Below is a historical screenshot from the beginning of the year taken from CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin is not far off a trillion dollars, trading close to $50,000 and making its way into the wider market. Ethereum recently dropped below $4,000 while third place is occupied by Binance coin BNB. Tether is the first stablecoin on the list in fourth place, while Solana jumps in next in fifth place. The coin, linked to a revered businessman named Sam Bankman-Fried, is marketing itself as an ETH killer and making serious gains, now over $50 billion in market cap. The only other stablecoin is USD Coin in seventh place, while Dogecoin ranks tenth when excluding stablecoins, or twelfth overall. There’s also LUNA, or Terra, at ninth – the currency that powers Terra’s growing DeFi ecosystem. Life is good, life is fun, life is all up. Sure, the market has pulled back a bit since November when Bitcoin hit its all-time high of $68,739, but prices are still high and profits are flowing. Happy New Year and move forward in 2022.
One year later
A year later, you can probably argue that things are a little different. I’ve gathered the performance of the top 10 coins (excluding two stablecoins) in the chart below: Luna obviously went pretty much to zero. Solana comes in as the second worst performer, losing a staggering 92% of its value in 2022. From being ranked the fourth largest cryptocurrency, it is now the sixteenth. Avalanche also killed investors, dropping from eleven to eighteen and reducing 87% of its value in the process. The best performers are BNB, XRP and Dogecoin, the trio losing “only” 56%/57% of their value. BNB, despite the recent controversy surrounding Binance, looks set to end the year as the fifth largest cryptocurrency, having let USDC and USDT overtake it. This year, it really was only stablecoins that were immune to price action. Even Bitcoin and Ethereum are down 64% and 67% respectively. Again, all of these numbers would be expanded further if expanded back to November’s all-time highs. Investors will be relieved to see the year come to an end, such has been the punishment in the markets. The only problem is that we are still in a high interest rate environment, the industry is still dealing with the FTX fallout and the world is a very uncertain place right now.