Bitcoin (BTC) has seen its worst quarterly loss in 11 years with price and activity on the blockchain both dropping over the last three months. Three-monthly returns on Bitcoin haven’t been this bad since it was trading under $20 in the primary days of Mt. Gox, but the stock market isn’t faring so hot either.
According to CoinGecko, the second quarter ending June 30 saw Bitcoin’s price fall from around $45,000 at the start of the quarter to trade at $19,884 before midnight ET on June 30, representing a 56.2% loss according to crypto analytics platform Coinglass.
It’s the sheer price fall since the third quarter of 2011 when BTC fell from $15.40 to $5.03, a loss of over 67% and of poorer quality than the bear markets of 2014 and 2018 when Bitcoin’s price slumped 39.7% and 49.7% in their worst quarters correspondingly.
The past quarter experienced eight weekly red candles in a row for Bitcoin and the month of June saw a drawdown of over 37%, the most substantial since September 2011 which saw the price fall more than 38.5% in a month.
There are also signs that investors remain cautious or they’ve run out of funds — during the bear. Activity on the blockchain is taking a dive with Bitcoin’s spot volume the total amount of coins conducted on the blockchain — dropped over 58.5% in just nine days according to an analysis from Arcane Research on June 29.
But it’s not just crypto markets in confusion. Thanks to sky-high inflation and rising interest rates the traditional stock market has also taken a pounding, with some calling it for stock the “worst quarter ever”.
CEO of Financial advisory firm Compound Capital Advisors, Charlie Bilello shared a chart on Twitter showing the S&P 500 index was down 20.6% in the first half of 2022, the worst start to the year for the index since 1962 when price return was -26.5%.
The difficult economic conditions have seen a strip of staff layoffs from crypto companies including Gemini, Crypto.com, and BlockFi. Most lately the crypto and stock trading platform Bitpanda follows the path and cut its, employee count, by approximately 277 full-time and part-time employees.
Crypto is closely tied to the wider tech sector and the tech-heavy NASDAQ composite index has fell by almost 22.5% over the second quarter.
A “Tech Layoff Tracker” from technology jobs board TrueUp exposes over 26,000 tech employees across 200 company-wide cutbacks just in June alone.
Over the quarter, 307 dismissals impacted over 52,000 staff with one of the largest comings with 3,500 impacted, from Elon Musk’s Tesla. Coinbase features twice, firstly for its June 2 hiring freeze and job offer rescission of nearly 350 people and second for its June 14 staff layoff, distressing 1,100 individuals.
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