Worst And Best Performing Cryptocurrencies In 2022
Undoubtedly, this has been one of the worst years for cryptocurrencies. The digital asset market has experienced a lot in 2022:
- A war in Europe,
- Record-high inflation in the US,
- The demise of Terra and FTX,
- A great deal of job loss,
- Plummeting prices
Not all coins have been impacted equally by the conditions. Yes, most cryptocurrencies are in the red, but others have recently declined significantly, and some have even managed to defy the trend and become the best performing cryptocurrencies in 2022.
Best performing cryptocurrencies for 2022.
Most successful: Ethereum (ETH)
The price movement of Ethereum in 2022 does not bode well. ETH’s price at the time of writing was $1,190. That is more than 68% less than its value as of January 1 this year. The Merge, on the other hand, elevates ETH to the top performer’s list for this year.
One of the largest developments in the history of cryptocurrencies was Ethereum’s switch to the proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. With all the additional network enhancements planned, it has allowed ETH to reach new heights in the upcoming months. Staked ETH has doubled since The Merge was finished, rising from 7.67 million ETH on September 15 to almost 15.7 million ETH at this time.
Staking yields have likewise steadily increased in parallel. Ether stakes on Lido might yield returns of up to 10.7% annually as of mid-November. Other, more complex staking services, like Index Coop’s Interest Compounding Ether (icETH), we’re providing returns of up to 25.5%. Since ETH is one of the better-performing coins of 2022, it may not seem like it.
Trust Wallet Token (TWT)
The native cryptocurrency of Trust Wallet, TWT, provides numerous advantages and incentives to platform users. The Trust Wallet, a self-custody mobile cryptocurrency wallet that supports a wide range of well-known cryptocurrencies, uses TWT as its native token. For Android users, Trust Wallet also includes a built-in DEX.
The coin with the best YTD performance is probably TWT. It was trading at $1.52 at the time of writing, which is close to 110 per cent more than when the year began. TWT also reached its all-time high (ATH) of $2.65 on December 12, but after the Fed announced it would raise interest rates by 0.50 basis points, it started to fall along with the rest of the crypto market.
The token’s price started rising quickly in November. Thousands of customers lost access to their money when FTX crashed because it was still in non-custodial wallets on the site. As a result, there was FUD surrounding these crypto storage options, and users started moving their money to self-custody options like Trust Wallet. This is one of the key causes of TWT’s unexpectedly rapid expansion.
Investors and dealers are no longer confident in centralized exchanges as a result of FTX’s demise (CEXs). Massive losses can result from even the smallest financial blunder or error in judgment. Sam Bankman-Fried, one of these platforms’ major personalities, is given far too much authority and responsibility, not to mention control over what happens to all of the user’s money.
Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have become increasingly well-liked since the FTX catastrophe. One of these decentralized trading platforms is GMX. It offers cheap swap fees and transactions with no price impact while enabling customers to transact in cryptocurrencies on-chain. There are a number of reasons why the platform’s native cryptocurrency has seen a steady rise in value in 2022.
The increase in users following the FTX catastrophe is the primary explanation. The second would be the token’s October 2018 listing on FTX and Binance, which caused GMX to rise by 17%. Finally, the total value locked on the network has steadily increased on GMX. It has increased significantly from just $100 million at the beginning of the year to $504 million on December 16.
You may be wondering why USDC, a stablecoin, is included on this list. While it is accurate, the market capitalization of USDC has increased significantly. Since its value is tied to that of the dollar, it cannot appreciate in value. Additionally, the token is narrowing the gap with USDT, the leading stablecoin at the moment in terms of market capitalization.
The market capitalization of USDC was about $42 billion at the beginning of the year. This rapidly increased to $55 billion in June of this year before gradually declining after that. The market capitalization of USDC was $44.5 billion at the time of writing. Tether’s market valuation was $78.35 billion at the beginning of the year. However, as of the time of writing, that figure has fallen to $66.22 billion.
As a result, USDC has grown and is in danger of unseating the market’s leading stablecoin, which has declined since the year’s beginning.
Also, read – Top 5 Liquidity Pools for Cryptocurrencies
2022’s worst performing cryptocurrency
Crashed tokens
The FTT, LUNA, and UST tokens would undoubtedly be this year’s greatest losers. These tokens lost the majority of their value when their respective platforms went under. On May 4, the price of LUNA, now known as Luna Classic (LUNAC), was $82. On May 13, it was $0.00003. a decrease of 99.99% in less than ten days.
UST, renamed TerraClassisUSD (USTC), which lost its $1 peg on May 5 and fell to $0.017 a month later, experienced a similar situation. Six months later, FTT was the one to falter. Sam Bankman-now-defunct Fried’s exchange’s native coin has dropped from $25 on November 5 to $0.97 as of this writing.
Since the year’s beginning, Solana (SOL) SOL has lost about 94 per cent of its value. The coin was trading at $172 on January 1, but the bear market, several network outages, platform hacks, the Terra and FTX meltdowns, as well as other factors, have led to a sharp decline in its price valuation.
For instance, SOL plunged from $94.14 on May 5 to $43.91 on May 12 following the collapse of Terra. The crypto winter eventually caught up with SOL, which peaked at $36.02 on November 6. Then, as a result of the FTX debacle, SOL dropped by 50% over the following four days, reaching $13.86 by November 10.
The intimate ties between FTX and Solana are a factor in SOL’s precipitous collapse. Between December 2020 and March 2022, Alameda Research, FTX’s sibling company, invested in more than 10 Solana projects. When FTX was at its peak, this relationship was beneficial, but it ultimately led to its demise when SBF’s empire went up in flames.
Metaverse Coins
The crypto winter has wreaked havoc on metaverse coins, including Axie Infinity (AXS), Sandbox (SAND), and Decentraland (MANA). MANA has lost 90% of its value, while AXS and SAND are down about 93 per cent for the year. Most of these losses occurred in the first half of 2022 due to declining customer interest, the Russia-Ukraine war, inflation concerns, and subpar Meta profitability, among other factors.
If you contrast the ATHs of these tokens with their present market values, the situation becomes even worse. For instance, AXS is now trading at $6.82 while having an ATH of $165.37. SAND is now trading at $0.455, but its ATH is $8.44. Finally, although MANA is now selling at $0.31, it reached an ATH of $5.19 in November 2021.
As a competitor to “Ethereum,” Fantom is a layer 1 smart-contract blockchain that was introduced in December 2019. The project’s performance hasn’t been great in 2022, with a 92 per cent decline from the year’s beginning. The majority of the value of FTM was also lost in H1 of 2022, much like the aforementioned metaverse tokens. The departure of the platform’s senior personnel was a further disappointment.
After the Terra meltdown on May 12, FTM had fallen from $2.3 on January 1 to $0.26, when combined with all of H1’s market commotion. When the platform’s CTO Andre Cronje and Senior Solutions Architect Anton Nell declared they were leaving the cryptocurrency industry in March 2022, the token fell by 22% in a single day. Since that time, FTM has fluctuated between $0.3 and $0.2.
Conclusion
Historical data demonstrates the cyclical nature of the cryptocurrency market. Therefore, even though the majority of coins have a large YTD loss, a turnaround may be expected in 2023. In the interim, the bear market presents a great chance to buy low and save on acquisition fees. Cryptocurrencies are very volatile, though. Make sure to conduct your research and only invest money you can afford to lose.
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