Crypto Market Cap Fell by 64.1% to $829 Billion in 2022: Report

With bearish trends in Bitcoin (BTC), Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), the market capitalization of the global cryptocurrency market slumped by 64.1% to $829 billion at the end of 2022, which is down from $2.3 trillion at the start of the year.

In a similar fashion, spot trading volume on the top 10 crypto exchanges collapsed to $0.46 trillion in December, which is down 67.3% from $1.5 trillion in January 2022. The deepest decline in this market occurred during the fourth quarter of the year in the aftermath of FTX's collapse and the resulting contagion that impacted over 1 million estimated depositors, creditors and investors, the report notes.

These figures are according to the CoinGecko 2022 Annual Crypto Industry Report released on Tuesday. The report notes that BTC emerged as the worst-performing asset in the year as it sank by 64.2%. However, BTC traded above $21,000 on Tuesday, with the total market cap briefly topping above the US$1 trillion mark.

#CoinGecko 2022 Annual Crypto Industry Report 📊2022 was a tumultuous year for #crypto - NFTs and DeFi are among the hardest hit sectors, while stablecoins had a mixed performance.Here are 8 key highlights you shouldn't miss 👇 pic.twitter.com/w4n4BoSq7x

Also, the CoinGecko report highlights that the NFT industry had its first bearish cycle in 2022 with trading volume across the top eight chains shrinking to $1.5 billion by the last quarter of the year, which is down from $13.3 billion during the first quarter.

In addition, the DeFi market saw its tokens, minus stablecoins and wrapped tokens, collapse by 72.9% “with various governance and utility tokens losing over $48.4 billion in value.” The stablecoin market, for its part, descreased 16.6% to $27.3 billion by year-end.

Watch this recent FMLS22 session on the future of cryptocurrencies.

Resilient Crypto Industry?

However, despite these trends, crypto adoption remained steady “with a healthy growth of BTC and Ethereum addresses.” Furthermore, the report notes that Ethereum staking improved significantly quarter-on-over-year, reaching 15.8 million units by the end of the year. This represents an 80% increase compared to the 8.8 million units posted at the start of 2022.

“In the first half of 2022, growth of total staked ETH in validators can be attributed to a bullish Ethereum Merge sentiment. Following a successful Merge in mid-September, the crypto community began to anticipate the upcoming Shanghai upgrade – driving its notable growth last quarter,” CoinGecko explained.