10 Crypto Highlights of 2022

Are you ready for the New Year’s celebration?

Well, before you dive into the holidays, we’d like to offer you a review of the most significant events of the Crypto World. This year was full of surprises, both shocking and interesting. Let’s recap some of the main events that happened during this action-packed year.

TOP 10 trends and events of 2022

Let’s start with some positive crypto events of this year.

1. Ethereum 2.0

Undoubtedly, one of the biggest events of the year was the Ethereum merge. In 2022, the network transitioned from proof of work to proof of stake consensus algorithm. The Ethereum mainnet is to combine its forces with the Beacon Chain to make it possible for the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism to be substituted by the Proof-of-Stake. Instead of receiving block-finding rewards, users will be incentivized for staking ETH. 

With these changes, the platform wanted to enhance its scalability and security, and make it more sustainable, since PoS requires less energy. This should reduce energy consumption by 99.9%. Ethereum upgrades are not finished yet; the team plans to further improve the system in 2023-2024.

2. Metaverse and NFT development

Metaverse became a buzzword lately. The more projects appear in the Crypto World, the more it seems real that one day in the near future people will move their lives completely online. The most well-known project in this area belongs to Meta. However, there are plenty of other interesting spaces. Famous brands put on their fashion shows, artists organize concerts, people get married and buy real estate in Metaverse. 

More and more companies are trying to use this new opportunity to attract more people. For example, if you are a sports fan, you can probably already find your favorite team online to communicate with team members and influence their careers. One of the most anticipated events for sports fans, FIFA-2022 started on November 20 in Qatar. This year, fans of national football teams got the opportunity to support their favorites and get digital collectibles and exclusive experiences in the Metaverse. It is very exciting to see a mainly offline event getting a modern twist.

Metaverse is closely related to cryptocurrency and NFTs. Everything that can be sold and bought takes the form of NFT. So the active development of the Metaverse gave a boost to NFTs. 

3. Progress on crypto adoption

Despite the ongoing crypto winter and several events that shook the market, the interest in the sphere is only growing, and 2022 proved that. For example, in October, Visa announced widening the range of crypto products and services, including managing cryptocurrency transactions, wallet services, NFTs, and so on. Visa is making its steps into the Crypto World. It is known that this year the company has filed 2 trademark applications for a number of cryptocurrency solutions. Visa has always been friendly to innovations. It has partnered with over 60 companies in the field and is working on enabling crypto payments for more people and businesses. 

MasterCard is also following the same path. The company is preparing to enable support of a list of cryptocurrencies. Specially for this they partnered with a company, named Bakkt. MasterCard will offer loyalty rewards, crypto wallets and ability to make transactions without changing to fiat.

Other companies that adopt crypto include Western Union, Mastercard, Paypal, eBay, and many others.

4. Cardano’s 1 million

The blockchain reached an important milestone at the beginning of January, but the metric was quite an unusual one: one million trees were planted with the corresponding records on the blockchain. The Cardano Foundation worked together with a crypto startup Veritree to help the environment in an effort to become an eco-friendly blockchain. Cardano plans to continue work on land restoration in Kenya.

5. M2E projects

All of us are well familiar with play-to-earn projects. A whole part of the modern gaming industry is built upon the idea to attract customers by letting them earn money. A new concept is that a user has to achieve some fitness goals to gain incentives. There already are a number of applications that support this idea. For example, Sweat Economy, Lympo.io, Genopet, etc. Some major sports goods companies also join this flow. Nike announced its own platform .Swoosh to be launched next year. It is supposed to be a Web3 platform that will combine online games with real-life benefits.

2022 was anything but boring for the Crypto World and it was marked by some shocking and unpleasant events as well.

6. Crypto Winter

This Crypto Winter followed an amazing rally of 2021, which made it even worse. The last Crypto Winter which is comparable to this one happened in 2017 - 2018. However, some analysts believe that these two crises had different bases. While in 2017 the crash happened because of the hype bubble burst, this time the crypto market was influenced by macroeconomic events, such as severe inflation. Another important factor is that since 2018 a lot of institutional investors have joined the crypto market.

Everyone has already learned that the Crypto World is unpredictable and full of surprises. We are not scared of bear markets and created memes about crypto pessimists. But sometimes even if you think you are well prepared, some events may strike your imagination.

7. Terra Luna crash

The dramatic events that took place in May of 2022, started with $2 billion worth of UST being unstaked, which caused panic, and a price decline. Terra was considered a stablecoin but it was not pegged to a fiat currency or gold. Instead, it was tied to another cryptocurrency, Luna. When both of them collapsed, it caused decreasing in the value of other cryptocurrencies and sparked a conversation about the necessity for more control in the sphere.

8. The collapse of FTX

Undoubtedly, one of the major events that provoked the BTC price decline, was the collapse of a large exchange FTX in November. After an investigation, mass withdrawals from the exchange followed the news that clients’ funds were used for the needs of Alameda Research, a company connected to the exchange. FTX filed for bankruptcy in the US, and there will be a criminal investigation because of the missing funds.

9. Regulation talks and actions

The story of Terra and Luna and the general decline in the crypto market that followed accelerated the push for increased control when it comes to digital assets. The US, for example, published the first comprehensive framework on the topic on September, 16. More discussions on the international level took place during the G20 summit in Indonesia in November.

10. Bitcoin price fall

Throughout 2022, Bitcoin price was highly turbulent and responded to numerous events that were shaking the crypto market as well as a more general economic recession. It was especially noticeable when the BTC value dropped significantly in May, June, and November. In November, the price renewed its anti-record from the same month of 2020. Is Bitcoin price going to increase? We will see next year.

It doesn’t matter if a person won big or suffered losses, the Crypto World has a surprise for everyone. It is still highly unpredictable. This is why it is important to keep in mind some major events, analyze them and learn from them.

SimpleSwap is happy to keep you informed, experience the major crypto events together with you, and provide you with the best service for exchanging buying, and selling cryptocurrency!