Happy Chinese New Year! As the Year of the Yellow Mountain Canis familiaris has fatigued to a close, it is time to await back at what happened.

While there was a promising start in January 2022, when almost altcoins were enjoying their all-time highs, the bear eventually took over, and the market delved into the and so-called "Crypto Wintertime." Notwithstanding, in that location was good news, too: The Usa regulators expressed their want to stick to "positive regulation," while big league investors poured some funds into a number of promising, compliant crypto projects (mostly stablecoins).

Here is what was happening calendar month-by-month, along with the main takeaways.

Jan 2022

Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck was hacked, overtaking the infamous 2022 Mt.Gox plummet — an industry-record-breaking $532 million worth of NEM tokens was stolen this fourth dimension.

Despite the amount of damage, Coincheck has managed to steadily rebound from the security alienation. Soon after the incident, the platform announced plans of working toward refunding all 260,000 victims. Coincheck too closely followed the orders of Financial Services Agency (FSA), the domestic watchdog, and eventually secured a license to operate, becoming a fully compliant amanuensis.

February 2022

The Securities and Substitution Committee (SEC) and the the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), America'south 2 main regulators when it comes to crypto, fabricated positive remarks nigh the manufacture before the Senate, making broad adoption and effective regulation more possible for the market.

On Feb. half-dozen, Jay Clayton and Chris Giancarlo, respective heads of both agencies, held a joint meeting, where they argued that "virtual currencies mark a paradigm shift in how nosotros recall about payments," but remained worried nearly the uncontrolled nature of ICOs. Giancarlo went as far as to explicate the term "HODL" to the Senate.

March 2022

Big tech companies proceeded to prohibit crypto-related advertisements on their platforms. While Facebook had already introduced its ban dorsum in January, social media giants Twitter and Google followed suit in March, introducing similar action.

The blanket bans did some impairment to the market. Not only did they deprive manufacture players of promotional tools, but the also contributed to the stigmatization of cryptocurrencies as a whole.

Crypto Year 2022 / Q1

April 2022

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced that the banking concern will no longer provide services to any person or business that deals with cryptocurrencies in what seemed like a de-facto ban introduced within a major marketplace. Although there were some signs of recovery since so, the harsh, Chinese-similar regulation has stayed.

May 2022

In what seemed similar an unexpected twist for a blue scrap institution, Goldman Sachs executive Rana Yared told The New York Times that Bitcoin "is not a fraud," and unveiled plans to trade cryptocurrency. That marked an important pace on Wall Street'due south path to the crypto market.

June 2022

Jay Clayton, the chair of the SEC, confirmed that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are not securities since they act as a replacement for sovereign currencies. That annotate suggested that the agency won't investigate into the latter's initial coin offering (ICO) and deem it as unregistered, which would potentially result in large fines and penalties.

Crypto Year 2022 / Q2

July 2022

July proved to exist an of import month for regulation in the crypto industry, as two separate U.South. congressional hearings centering the affair were held: I by the Firm Agriculture Committee, and the other by the House Fiscal Services Committee.

The meetings struck completely dissimilar tones: While the latter echoed some of the nearly conservative sentiments regarding the realm of crypto — with the obligatory call for a blanket ban — the one-time appeared more positive, as the board of experts provided the regulators with collected considerations bothering the industry.

Baronial 2022

Crypto market experienced a major plunge, delving into a full-on comport mode, which yet stays as of press fourth dimension. On Aug. fourteen, ETH alone shedded as much as 20 percent of its value, while BTC lost its $half dozen,500 support.

September 2022

The SEC requested more comments on its decision near the listing and trading of a BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) created by New York-based firms VanEck and SolidX, which was regarded as i of the top candidates among the community.

Essentially, the regulator showed it wasn't going to make any decisions on BTC ETFs in 2022, therefore prolonging the hypothetical inflow of Wall Street'southward coin.

Crypto Year 2022 / Q3

October 2022

Major U.Due south. crypto commutation Coinbase launched the stablecoin USD Money (USDC) in collaboration with Goldman Sachs-backed startup Circle, making it the first stablecoin for trade on the platform.

Overall, stablecoins attracted a lot of institutional capital letter throughout 2022 considering of their amnesty toward volatility, i of conventional institutions' main fears regarding the crypto market.

Nov 2022

A Bitcoin Greenbacks (BCH) network update resulted in a circuitous battle, and its blockchain was carve up into 2 as a result, with BCH ABC and BCH SV being located on opposing corners of the ring.

The latter'southward proponents, represented by the likes of Roger Ver and Bitmain'south Jihan Wu, stood for the idea that the bones structure of BCH "does non need whatsoever radical change." BCH SV allies, on the other manus, lead by Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, attempted to restore "the original Satoshi protocol."

The BCH ABC camp eventually secured the original "BCH" ticker on the majority of digital avails platforms, winning the and then-chosen "hash wars." Nevertheless, Bitcoin SV lived on equally well, and is currently the 11th-largest currency as of press time, co-ordinate to data from CoinMarketCap.

December 2022

Bloomberg reported on Facebook's potential expansion into the stablecoins market. More specifically, according to the news bureau, the social media giant is developing a stablecoin for WhatsApp users. The cryptocurrency will reportedly be used for coin transfers made within the messaging app and will focus on the Indian marketplace.

The move seems somewhat controversial for Facebook, given that the platform has banned cryptocurrency-related ads across its network and so partly backpedaled on information technology in the by. Nonetheless, if Facebook confirms the news, the crypto market is expected to gain a lot of relevance for the mainstream fiscal world.

Crypto Year 2022 / Q4

January 2022

The start of 2022 was non optimistic, every bit the crypto wintertime continues. On Jan. 28, Bitcoin lost its $iii,500 support and stayed generally below that line for the side by side week. Notwithstanding, around Feb. 9, it climbed up above the $three,600 mark, while the balance of the market also turned green, showing strong signs of reversal.

Crypto January 2022

At present allow'south have a expect at the chief things that happened in separate parts of the market place — from ICOs to mining.

ICO market might take died — or at least went into a coma

The ICO market, which was famously booming throughout 2022, took a serious hit.

Even though ICOs raised the record amount in 2022 — $8.27 billion, which is twice equally much every bit in the previous year — the number of coin offerings has been falling since Q1. Moreover, the bulk of gathered funds were secured by just 2 projects: blockchain protocol EOS ($four.2 billion) and messaging app Telegram ($1.7 billion).

There might be a number reasons for the decline. Outset, the regulators stepped in and questioned the legitimacy of ICOs as a fundraising model. As a event, in that location has been a "cascade of uncertainty," associated with the ICO token nomenclature. According to a December statement from the SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, ICOs are currently operating in a way that grants significantly less investor protection compared to more traditional markets.

Indeed, co-ordinate to a articulation investigation published by Yahoo Finance and Decrypt Media in Oct 2022, the SEC had expanded its crackdown on ICOs, putting "hundreds" of projects at chance. The watchog reportedly establish that a great deal of startups had violated securities laws during the fundraising stage, and pressured them to "quietly agree" to refund investors' money and pay fines.

Total Funds Raised in ICOs in 2022

Likewise, ICOs have been somewhat stigmatized by the big tech companies, which chose to ban ICO-related ads on their platforms this year. Facebook was first, having prohibited coin offering ads back in January. Afterwards, social media giants Twitter and Google followed conform.

Moreover, ICOs seem to exist heavily cashing out as the year comes to a shut. As per data from software evolution house Santiment, ICO startups had been transacting ETH at breakneck speed, with over 400,000 ETH moving out of wallets during late November to early December.

In a December interview with Bloomberg, Michael Novogratz alleged that "the ICO market is pretty much dead correct now." He added, however, that "the SEC doesn't desire to kill this innovation" and that he expects a market for regulated security tokens in the U.S.

He explained that security tokens "aren't things that go from $1 to $1,000" but are instead "things that yield fourteen percentage" that volition be sold to qualified buyers. "That sounds a heck of a lot less sexy, but you're going to see that business abound," he concluded. Indeed, more than regulation-oriented fundraising models, like initial public offerings (IPOs), might be next to carry the torch.

Mining became a big boy's business

In December, AMD's popular Radeon RX580 graphics processing unit (GPU), which has been widely used by crypto miners, was reported every bit existence sold for $179.99. In comparison, the same GPU unit of measurement toll $550 in February, meaning that it has seen a 67 per centum price drop throughout the bearish year. Similarly, Nvidia experienced a massive sell-off of its shares in Q4 2022, cutting the stock cost by 54 pct due to the drastic subtract in crypto mining's profitability.

Indeed, as Cointelegraph previously reported, the year-long bear market place has had a pregnant result on the crypto mining industry, with dramatic drops in revenue forcing many miners to quit the industry and sell off their equipment. Some miners take even started selling mining devices by the kilogram in an effort to recoup losses equally their rigs attain "shutdown prices."

Bitcoin Mining Profitability in 2022

Mining industry professionals switched over from GPU to custom ASICs (as per Dec, just two mining rigs remain assisting), and large mining pools alike to the Chinese outfit Bitmain and European mining firm Bitfury accept taken over smaller-calibration miners. Both of the mining companies are now looking to go public and hence further cement their position within the industry.

Compliance became absurd

During the Year of the Dog, the market started its steady shift from the unregulated, Wild Due west-like era to a regulated ecosystem recognized past large financial institutions.

While most countries are still struggling to roll out definite regulatory frameworks or concrete central bank digital currency (CBDC) projects, the SEC and CFTC came in with an iron fist and started to prosecute bad actors.

Having recognized that the rules have changed, new projects on the crypto market are beingness designed to comply with the law from the very start. Thus, some of most anticipated announcements in the manufacture include approval of ETFs, which could push crypto toward broader recognition on Wall Street and arrival of Intercontinental Exchange'due south (ICE) virtual currency platform Bakkt.

Similarly, stablecoins, which tackle volatility — one of the cryptocurrencies' chief dilemmas — without compromising their core values ensured past blockchain, seem to attract a pregnant portion of investment from big league players such equally IBM, Andreessen Horowitz and Peter Thiel. Even Facebook is rumored to be developing its own stablecoin at this point.

"Blockchain over Bitcoin" became the traditional market's favorite view toward crypto

As the compliance tendency is steadily squeezing out the concept of anonymity, with its Know Your Client (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements, the tech has begun to outshine the underlying cryptocurrency. Consequently, "Blockchain before Bitcoin" has go the go-to policy for countries like China and Southward Korea, which have either practical strict regulations on crypto trading or banned it birthday, but attempted to create blockchain-friendly infrastructure for fintech startups.

Similarly, fiscal institutions and large corporations take besides been hopping on the blockchain wagon for the past year, with main examples being Amazon and Facebook, which focused on their blockchain arms this year, besides as Santander, a Espana-based bank that experimented with its blockchain-powered payment network for cross-border payments.

However, every bit the word "blockchain" itself became overhyped, according to a November report published past Forrester Research, some companies are, in fact, ceasing their apply of the term "blockchain" in favor of "distributed ledger technology" (DLT). The study as well suggested that many firms are overhyping the usefulness of blockchains or using the proper name of the technology to repackage existing services, a practice the newspaper describes equally "blockchain washing."

Further, the report fabricated some predictions regarding blockchain, suggesting a slowdown in the its adoption or a and so-called "blockchain winter," noting that while the technology is making headway, information technology is still a "cautious progress":

"On the tools and services side, nosotros'll witness steady simply cautious progress. 'Cautious' because DLT hasn't proven to be a significant, reliable revenue stream for software and service providers, and 2022 won't be any different."

Ability struggles within the marketplace: XRP vs. ETH, BCH vs. itself, EOS vs. the people

While Bitcoin (BTC) is still rex when it comes to market dominance, other cryptocurrencies have been fighting for their spots in the meridian 10. Most noticeably, Ripple (XRP) has managed to knock Ethereum (ETH) out of its second place during the conduct market, while Bitcoin Greenbacks (BCH) has split into two assets, both of which are currently featured in the elevation 10 likewise.

In regard to newcomers, the most noticeable player is EOS, which finished its historically expensive ICO and launched its mainnet in June 2022, swiftly building up its market cap and eventually entering the elevation 5. Nonetheless, the relatively new project still has to live upwards to its hype — EOS has been numerously criticized by decentralization pundits.