The crypto winter that has prevailed for the better half of the year shows no signs of leaving, something that has sent several cryptocurrencies tumbling from their all-time highs. This continues as we near the end of the first half of 2022, and major cryptos continue to fall, with all trading deep in red.
The global crypto market has seen a major fall in its market cap – it dropped by 6.5% from Saturday to fall below the $900 billion mark to trade at $843.56 billion. Additionally, the total crypto volume fell by 24.6% over the past 24 hours to currently come to $57.13 billion.
The total volume in DeFi stood at $4.28 billion, which amounts to 7.49% of the total crypto market’s 24-hour volume, while the volume of all stable coins was $51.18 billion, which is 89.58% of the crypto market’s 24-hour volume.
The hard hits taken by the crypto sector this year have made the big players take some tough calls – major crypto exchange Coinbase decided to lay off 18% of its global workforce after extending its hiring freeze, while crypto lending firm Celsius halted withdrawals and transfers between accounts.
Many others have laid off their employees to combat rising consumer prices and interest rates, inflation, and to stay healthy in the economic downturn as fears of a recession after an economic boom of over 10 years continues to increase. This resulted in cooling investor interest, a funding crunch, and the unwillingness of investors to take risks.
Testament to the struggles of the crypto market is the performance of some of the leading cryptocurrencies of the world. Bitcoin, the largest crypto which reached record heights earlier in 2021 – $68000 – has now fallen to its lowest level in 18 months – below the $20,000 mark.
It reached a new low of $17,593 – a fall of 13.7% and its lowest since December 2020 – before marking a small recovery to reach $20,400 levels, still down.
It, like its fellow crypto Ethereum-backed Ether, has lost much of its value this year. While Bitcoin lost about 60% of its value in 2022, Ether lost a humongous 74% and is currently trading at $965.73. Over the week, both have fallen by almost 35% and 40% respectively.
“Breaking $20,000 shows you that confidence has collapsed for the crypto industry and that you’re seeing the latest stresses,” Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA, said on Saturday.
Others like Solana, Dogecoin, and XRP have clocked similar falls, falling by 7.62%, 5.14%, and 7.26% respectively over the past 24 hours. They are currently trading at $30.25, $0.052, and $0.31 respectively.
