And that's what happened in the end.
- The year 2022 has become extremely fruitful for hackers - they stole a record $ 3.8 billion from crypto exchanges;
- Sanctions, global instability, the collapse of cryptocurrencies by more than 50% and other negative news of the crypto market led to the fact that in 2022 more than 90% of all bitcoins were outside crypto exchanges;
- Among the main failures of the crypto market, the infamous FTX exchange certainly holds the lead, but it is by no means alone - for example, the BlockFi exchange is on a par with it;
- Binance, the market leader, also got it. And not only on December 13 last year, when $ 1.4 billion was withdrawn from it in one day, but also after the theft of 0.5 billion client funds, when the exchange was forced to stop working;
- Nevertheless, Binance continues to confidently hold the first place in the top crypto exchanges with a trading volume of 1,649,472,593,799 rubles and 14,524,347 weekly visits. Coibase is in second place, Kraken is in third;
- State and governmental structures are beginning attempts to actively participate in the functioning of the cryptocurrency market, and especially after the FTX incident. For example, the US authorities seized about $3.6 billion in Bitcoin, which was stolen during the hacking of the Bitfinex exchange. And in Russia, the first case of embezzlement of assets of a cryptocurrency exchange was initiated;
- Crypto exchanges were forced to reduce their staff. The largest outflow of employees was observed on the Crypto.com exchanges (a total of 2,260 people or about 40% of the team), Coinbase (1,1 thousand or 18%) and Kraken (1 thousand or 30%);
- The sanctions prompted the largest exchanges to impose restrictions on the crypto wallets of Russian users. So, for example, Binance limited the amount of funds available to 10 thousand dollars.
- The owners of crypto exchanges, in particular Coinbase, announced a drop in their revenue in 2022 by an average of half.
So, it becomes obvious that the largest crypto exchanges were able to survive the perfect storm of 2022 and not only stay afloat, but also preserve fertile ground for further development. While smaller market players suffered much more or even ceased to exist. The above data and news about crypto exchanges make it clear that despite all the isolation of this market, it is part of the global financial system and somehow experiences all its ups and downs together with it.
