Bitcoin investors have suffered a terrible three-months. The leading cryptocurrency has lost over 56% of its value in Q2 2022. Bitcoin (BTC), has suffered its worst quarterly loss in over a decade, as the price of the most popular cryptocurrency plunged as high as 56.27% between April-June according to data from Blockchain analytics Skew.
This is the worst quarter-end performance since Q3 2011. Bitcoin dropped by 66.62% from $15.40 to $5.14. This beats the severe price slumps in the first and fourth quarters 2018, when BTC lost 42.54% and 49.89%, respectively.
After a calm start to 2022 that saw Bitcoin drop by only 1.46%, the benchmark cryptocurrency plunged from $45,000 at April’s beginning to $20,000 by June 30, falling below $18,000.
According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin traded at $19,594 as of press time. This is an increase of 1.89% in the past 24 hours.
The market collapse occurred amid a series of dramatic events such as the collapse Terra ecosystem and the liquidity crisis faced in some crypto lending firms, hedge funds and Three Arrows Capital (3AC),.
Many established companies also announced that they would be reducing their workforce or shrinking operations as the combined market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies fell below $1 trillion in June.
These include crypto exchanges coinbase, Gemini and Crypto.com as well as crypto lenders BlockFi and Bitpanda, the most prominent European crypto broker.
In downturn, stocks join Bitcoin
Geopolitical tensions and growing uncertainty in global financial market markets combined with the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates by 0.75 – the largest increase in 28 years – put more pressure on traditional equity markets.
The tech-oriented Nasdaq Composite has fallen more than 30% since the beginning of the year. The S&P 500 is down 21% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 15.88% during the same period.
However, the crypto space is not all doom & gloom. Some key players such as Binance, FTX and Kraken have confirmed that they will be hiring new talent.
Others, like Nayib Bukele from El Salvador and Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy, bought the dip to increase their Bitcoin stacks.
MicroStrategy stated earlier this week that it bought an additional 448 Bitcoins at an average cost of $20,817 each, while El Salvador declared today that the country had purchased 80 Bitcoins at $19,000 per coin.
