It's now December 2022 and it's been a tough year for the entire crypto market. Every month in 2022 there was a game-changing news announcement that moved the industry in both directions, never once favoring the bulls or the bears.

2022 started with a market decline after recording all-time high prices in November 2021 after covid pandemic lockdown (remember lockdown). Bitcoin prices were down 20% from their previous month's levels and many investors started to panic by either selling their crypto or lending their crypto out to regain some sort of profit or yield.

In March the beginning of the TerraLuna collapse had already started when TerraLabs purchased 2,943 BTC to retain the Terra UST peg. Months later, TerraLuna's collapse caused a bank run on not just its DeFi counterparty Anchor, but the entire crypto space leaving some exchanges scrambling to keep pace with withdrawals and restore trust to an already savage bear market.

In May, TerraLuna collapses. Three Arrows Capital (3AC) defaulted on its loans with Celcius, BlockFi, as well as numerous market makers and closes its doors for good with billions in losses. The default of these loans caused a chain reaction of failures across the entire crypto lending and borrowing market which is still being felt today.


In September, finally something good. The Ethereum 2.0 Proof-of-Stake chain launches and merges without a hitch. I'm not sure what you were doing, I was at the gym on the treadmill at block height 15537394 when nothing significant happened, except business as usual. 

This brings us to November and December 2022 when FTX and Alameda Research collapsed. There has been so much news, facts, and truly insane stories coming out of the FTX debacle that many YouTubers will have content for years to come. Yet, where the biggest effect on the crypto market to date, is still the TerraLuna collapse in early 2022.


At coinpass, we kept things simple and kept building and improving our products for our users & business clients. Our GBP and EUR on/off ramp offering has been performing stronger than ever and with the addition of stablecoins, (USDC & USDT) have become our most popular set of traded tokens to date. We migrated to a new tech stack as well as UI/UX with the community-demanded "dark mode" as well as adding card support for Fiat deposits via our partnership with Stripe card payments.

Next year we're planning on releasing our updated mobile apps and streamlining some new product offerings to make investing in crypto and rebalancing your portfolio even easier. 

If I had to sum up 2022 in just one line, I would say "it was a tough year." Crypto has been at the pointy end of the FinTech spear for the past 10 years and is still showing no signs of slowing down. Bitcoin has been declared dead over 400+ times, yet, the network has not gone down. Most of the events of 2022 weren't caused by malfunction, widespread hacks, or endless pumps and dumps, they were caused by mismanagement or fraud by a very small number of bad actors.
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“Blockchain just kept running. The space continued to innovate.” – Jeff Hancock

I'm excited about the developments in blockchain, DLT, DeFi, and CeFi over the next 12 months as we will start to see everyday household financial brands start to add crypto products to their line-up. This integration and innovation in crypto will further legitimize and add much-needed liquidity to the crypto market that we all love to invest, trade, and work in. Greater regulation and controls on the companies that succeed in this bear market will continue to grow in 2023 that offer great products to their user base.

With any luck, the tax code in the UK can maintain its pace to encourage investment, continue to evolve, and not penalize investors from making gains through Dollar-Cost-Averaging, Staking, and Trading.

From the coinpass team and I, we wish you a happy end to 2022, a Happy Christmas, a safe new year, and an exciting start to 2023.

Kind Regards,

Jeff Hancock
Co-Founder & CEO | coinpass.com