Worst quarter in 11 years as Bitcoin price and activity plunge

Published at: July 1, 2022

Bitcoin (BTC) has seen its worst quarterly loss in 11 years with price and activity on the blockchain both plunging over the last three months.

The second quarter ending Thursday saw Bitcoin’s price fall from around $45,000 at the start of the quarter to trade at $19,884 before midnight EST on Thursday, according to CoinGecko. This represents a 56.2% loss, according to crypto analytics platform Coinglass.

It’s the steepest price fall since the third quarter of 2011 when BTC fell from $15.40 to $5.03, a loss of over 67% and worse than the bear markets of 2014 and 2018 when Bitcoin’s price slumped 39.7% and 49.7% in their worst quarters respectively.

The past quarter saw eight weekly red candles in a row for Bitcoin and the month of June saw a drawdown of over 37%. This was the heaviest monthly losses since September 2011, which saw the price fall more than 38.5% in the month.

There are also signs that investors are keeping their powder dry — or they’ve run out of funds — during the bear market. Activity on the blockchain is taking a dive with Bitcoin’s spot volume — the total amount of coins transacting on the blockchain — dropped over 58.5% in just nine days, according to a Wednesda analysis from Arcane Research.

But, it’s not just crypto markets in turmoil. Thanks to sky-high inflation and rising interest rates, the traditional stock market has also taken a pounding, with some calling it the “worst quarter ever” for stocks.

Charlie Bilello, CEO of financial advisory firm Compound Capital Advisors, 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 S&P was down 20.6% in the first half of 2022, the worst start to a year for the index since 1962. $SPX pic.twitter.com/OMcX7yfP5o

— Charlie Bilello (@charliebilello) June 30, 2022

The difficult economic conditions have seen a swath of staff layoffs from crypto companies including Gemini, Crypto.com and BlockFi. Most recently, the crypto and stock trading platform Bitpanda 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 fallen by almost 22.5% over the second quarter.

A “Tech Layoff Tracker” from technology jobs board TrueUp reveals that over 26,000 tech employees across 200 company-wide cutbacks just in June alone.

Over the quarter, 307 layoffs impacted over 52,000 staff, with one of the largest coming from Elon Musk’s Tesla, with 3,500 impacted. Crypto exchange Coinbase is featured twice, first for its June 2 hiring freeze and job offer rescission of nearly 350 people and second for its June 14 staff layoff, affecting 1,100 individuals.