2022 has not been a good year for crypto. Just in January, prices had decreased by 25%. Although there was a recovery in February and March, prices continued to decline in the following months.
As poet Ozdemir Asaf's lines, "All colors were getting dirty at the same rate, they gave the first place to white"; not all coins were equally affected by the 2022 bear market. In the first 263 days of the year, two of the top 100 coins gained value: Trust Wallet and Uni Sed Leo. Appreciating the coins that have lost significantly less value than the others is also necessary.
Best Categories Of The Year
It is no coincidence that one of the two gaining coins is a centralized exchange and the other a wallet coin. In 2022, when the cost of money rises, platforms that can generate income as a business stand out. Centralized exchanges are at the forefront of the categories that generate significant income in the crypto world. The depreciation of coins such as BNB, FTX Token, OKB, and Gate Token remained below 50%. A pretty good performance at a time when even Bitcoin lost 60% of its value.
Apart from centralized exchanges, no other category stands out with its price performance. On the other hand, coins that gained value due to Ethereum's transition to Proof Of Stake draw attention. It has become the primary address for investors who rely on Ethereum Classic and Monero Proof-of-Work blockchains.
Worst Categories Of The Year
The metaverse is a category that is negatively differentiated from the market. Coins such as Sandbox, Decentraland, Axie Infinity have lost around 80% of their value. We witnessed similar depreciation in the category of games.
NFTs, one of the major categories of last year, were also the categories that performed poorly this year. NFT trading is predominantly based on Ethereum. NFT investors have written significant losses this year as NFT prices have also declined on an Ethereum basis.
In smart contract blockchains, another favorite category of last year, some coins performed above or below the average. Avalanche, Solana, and Flow, which performed well last year, have lost more than 80% this year.
Since we are in a bear market, we can find many categories that diverge negatively from the average. One of them is Web3 coins. Coins such as Filecoin, Arweave, and Helium, candidates for establishing the future internet, lost around 85% in value.
Top Performing Coins
Among the top 100 coins, Trust Wallet Coin showed the best performance, with a 25% increase in value. Trust Wallet Token, a utility token based on BEP-20, provides users various advantages when using their wallets. Trust Wallet is one of the most used wallets.
Unus Sed Leo, a centralized exchange, is in second place with a 12% increase in value. Stablecoins follow this pair in the ranking. Pax Gold, indexed to gold, has lost 10% of its value.
Next comes Chiliz with a 12% depreciation. Hosting the fan tokens of big clubs such as Barcelona, Juventus, PSG, and Chiliz is the most valuable coin in the sports category. The fan token of Trabzonspor, the football team of the city where I was born, is also traded on Chiliz. I think the future of sports coins is very bright.
I mentioned above that Ethereum Classic is performing well due to Ethereum conversion.
With 21% depreciation, Tron was the best-performing platform token of the year. The algorithmic stablecoin they released this year contributed to this performance. Justin Sun controls most of the Tron coins. Therefore, it would be appropriate to approach the price movements in this ecosystem with caution.
What About Hive?
Hive has lost 67% of its value since the beginning of the year. Bitcoin and Ethereum, on the other hand, lost 60% and 65%. Considering that small-scale coins depreciate more during bear markets, we can say that Hive performs on average.
Hive had gained 15 times in value last year. This year, its value has dropped to a third. So in the previous two years, the value of Hive has increased five times. The picture seems more positive when we evaluate the last two years together. We should also consider that Hive's return is more than Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Conclusion
Interest rates are increasing in the world this year due to high inflation. We have witnessed such rapid rate increases for the first time in the last 40 years. High-interest rates require a quick return on investment. That's why investors avoid digital assets unlikely to generate income in the short term and turn to platforms such as centralized exchanges.
When the increase in interest rates stops and signals for a rate cut are received, the opposite will happen this time. In other words, categories such as Web3, metaverse, and NFT, which lost value this year, will start to gain value again.
It is tough to predict when the bear market will end. As the Hive example shows, HODLing can be a good strategy.
Thank you for reading.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta