It’s been a tumultuous year for investors, but it’s been even more so for those with a stake in crypto.
In 2022, Bitcoin’s price has dropped by nearly 50% since its all-time high of $68,000 in November. Ethereum has followed bitcoin’s lead and so has just about every other cryptocurrency.
The crypto market, which has been tracking with the stock markets lately, has been a casualty of the broader market selloff of risky assets as investors wrestle with high inflation, the war in Ukraine, and shifts in U.S. monetary policy. Although not usually correlated to stocks, the crypto and stock markets are rising and falling in similar patterns.
June, in particular, was a whirlwind month for the crypto industry. Several crypto companies announced layoffs and froze withdrawals due to extreme market conditions. Some have even filed for bankruptcy to stem losses.
And some experts are warning the worst may be yet to come — and bitcoin’s price, as well as other cryptocurrencies, could drop even further.
“Sometimes bear markets can last up to several months,” Charlene Fadirepo, a crypto expert and founder of Guidefi, recently told NextAdvisor during an Instagram Live. “Some people track the 20-week average for bitcoin, and according to that, that gets us in the $20,000 to $30,000 range. I don’t know where it’s going to go, but based on past trends, we’ve been in that range.”
The latest crypto market crash is just a reminder for investors that crypto assets come with extra risk and volatility, especially in times of economic and political uncertainty like we’re in now. Either way, experts advise not to make financial decisions based on news-related panic or hype. Here’s what investors should make of the latest crypto news:
- Crypto brokerage Genesis announced on Wednesday that CEO Michael Moro is stepping down and the company is cutting 20% of its 260-person workforce. It’s the latest major crypto firm to show signs of struggle as the cryptocurrency market unwinds. Last month, Genesis disclosed it incurred losses tied to the collapse of Three Arrows Capital earlier this summer.
- One of Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrencies is surging. Dogecoin has been up more than 15% over the last week, mostly due to hype around its recently launched blockchain called dogechain. It touts itself as a layer 2 companion blockchain for dogecoin, allowing users to bridge the meme token onto the network to access different applications and NFTs. If users move the meme coin to dogechain, they receive a wrapped version of the coin called wDOGE. Experts have warned that meme coins like dogecoin are largely worthless, and generally recommend staying away from them.
- Galaxy Digital said this week it was terminating a $1.2 billion deal to acquire crypto broker BitGo. The now-terminated deal was announced in May 2021 as the largest corporate acquisition in the crypto sector’s history. Galaxy said it terminated the deal because BitGo didn’t hand over audited financial statements for 2021. BitGo called the termination “improper” and said it plans to “hold Galaxy Digital legally responsible.”
Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, and a good indicator of the crypto market in general, since other coins like Ethereum (and smaller altcoins) tend to follow its trends. Even though Bitcoin recently set another new all-time high, it was a pretty normal uptick for the crypto, which is notorious for its volatility. That’s not to say investors should take swings in either direction lightly, and this is also why investing experts recommend not making any major investment changes based on these normal fluctuations.
Cryptocurrency is still very new, and everything from innovation to regulation can have an outsize impact for investors. Here’s how you can invest smartly, regardless of what’s making news or Bitcoin’s price swings.
How Investors Should Deal With Volatility
Cryptocurrency volatility is nothing new, and you should be comfortable with this if you decide to invest.
Volatility can be attributed to an “immature market,” says Ollie Leech, learn editor at Coindesk, a cryptocurrency news outlet. Anything from a celebrity tweet to new federal regulation can send prices spiraling.
“If Elon Musk puts hashtag bitcoin in his Twitter bio, it sends Bitcoin up 10%,” says Leech.
This unpredictability is part of the reason why investing experts warn against investing huge amounts of your portfolio into a risky asset like crypto. Many recommend keeping your crypto holdings to less than 5% of your total portfolio.
For new investors, day-to-day swings can seem frightening. But if you’ve invested with a buy-and-hold strategy, dips are nothing to panic about, says Humphrey Yang the personal finance expert behind Humphrey Talks. Yang recommends a simple solution: don’t look at your investment.
“Don’t check on it. That’s the best thing you can do. If you let your emotions get too much into it then you might sell at the wrong time, make the wrong decision,” says Yang.
This is the traditional “set it and forget it” advice that many traditional long-term investors follow. If you can’t get on board, and the extreme dips continue to cause you worry, then you might have too much riding on your cryptocurrency investments.
“The most important thing any investor can do, whether they are investing in bitcoin or stocks, is not just to have a plan in place, but to also have a plan they can stick with,” says Douglas Boneparth, a CFP and the president of Bone Fide Wealth. “While buying the dip might be attractive, especially with an asset that you really like, it might not always be the best idea at the moment.”
Top Crypto News From Recent Months
Robinhood’s crypto unit fined $30 million
Robinhood was fined $30 million by New York’s top financial regulator, and it will reduce its headcount by about 23%. The hefty fine specifically went to Robinhood’s crypto enforcement unit, which allegedly violated anti-money-laundering and cybersecurity regulations. Meanwhile, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev blamed the challenging macro environment and pointed to high inflation and the crypto market crashing in June as the primary reasons for the layoffs. This comes a few months after it laid off 9% of its employees in April.
U.S. sanctions crypto mixing service Tornado Cash
The U.S. Department of Treasury sanctioned a crypto mixing service known as Tornado Cash on Monday because of its ties to Lazarus Group, a well-known cohort of hackers run by the North Korean state. The group is known to use stolen funds to help North Korea fund its nuclear weapons program. Services like Tornado Cash obscure the source of crypto transactions by shuffling together batches of transactions. Anyone in the U.S. is now prohibited from interacting with the service or any of the ethereum wallet addresses tied to Tornado Cash.
BlackRock inks crypto deal with Coinbase
BlackRock, one of the largest asset managers in the world, inked a deal with Coinbase that will allow its institutional clients to buy bitcoin. Coinbase said on its blog that the partnership will “create new access points for institutional crypto adoption,” which many experts say is important to mature and stabilize the price of bitcoin and the broader crypto market. The crypto exchange will provide crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage, and reporting capabilities to BlackRock’s end-to-end investment management platform.
