Bitcoin has been on a rocky road for most of 2022. While sentiment for the new year remains positive, Bitcoin may have followed some turbulent patterns that have brought it up to its current price point.
In January, BTC started the year at $47,827. By February, the SEC sanctioned BlockFi. Also, Wormhole, a popular chain protocol, was hacked losing some $30 million USD to sign the first big loss of the year. Despite this, Bitcoin closed that month with a price of $43,760. On March 23, the Ronin hack was recorded. The hacker stole 173,600 ETH and 25,500,000 USDC from the platform and moved them to his own Ethereum address to start the debacle.
Key events that pushed Bitcoin (BTC) lower.
May was even more eventful for the cryptocurrency market. The Terra (LUNA) ecosystem collapsed, also the CFTC lawsuit against the Gemini exchange ended up setting off alarm bells in the crypto investor community. Since then, 12 events have happened from June to October that revealed the severity of the bear market.
Coinbase, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges, laid off 18% of its staff. Voyager and Celsius filed for bankruptcy. Apart from these, Michael Saylor, left his position at Microstrategy when the market bottomed out. Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken along with Saylor, has been fired from his position at the company. While this was happening, the market was bearish for all assets, and Bitcoin was sitting at $20,420.
Last quarter of 2022.
October closed with the SEC placing Yuga Labs under investigation, then in November Binance announced a possible FTX (FTT) token sale. This event served as a trigger and aroused uncertainty among investors, critics, and even prominent players in the cryptocurrency industry. November ended with the bankruptcy filing of FTX and Blockfi. Both bankruptcies fueled the feeling that no one is 100% safe in the crypto world.
In December, the arrest of Sam Bankman Fried (SBF), former CEO of bankrupt FTX, took place. However, SBF was released on $250 million bail following his extradition from the Bahamas to the United States. Still very unstable for other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as the year is almost over.