2022’s Biggest Crypto and Blockchain News Stories

2022 saw various crypto crises as well as new developments. These are the top stories from the past year.

Cryptocurrency underwent a turbulent year in 2022. However, although various crises affected the industry, other events helped it grow further.

Here are the year’s most important events.

In February, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. In the months that followed, regulators imposed a series of sanctions on Russia, including restrictions on cryptocurrency transactions and trade. At the same time, the Ukrainian government and independent charities began to rely on cryptocurrency for fundraising purposes.

The TerraUSD stablecoin and its related cryptocurrency Luna both collapsed during May. The fall of TerraUSD has led to ongoing criminal investigations and lawsuits against project manager Do Kwon. Meanwhile, other contributors have tried to revive the crypto-asset, which still has some value.

Crypto lending firm Celsius stopped withdrawals in June and filed for bankruptcy in July. The company’s failure affected other companies, including Voyager Digital, Three Arrows Capital (3AC), CoinFLEX, Vauld and Babel Finance. Voyager and 3AC filed for bankruptcy while others suspended withdrawals.

The top two social media companies introduced support for NFTs this year. In January, Twitter began allowing users to add NFTs as profile pictures. In the summer, Facebook and its related app Instagram began allowing NFT posting and sharing. Both companies extended the availability of the feature after these dates.

In August, the Ethereum coin mixer Tornado Cash was sanctioned due to its use by the North Korean cybercrime group Lazarus. Using the service became illegal for most purposes, and a developer was arrested in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, the blending service continues to function as a decentralized application.

Ethereum fully transitioned to proof-of-stake with the merger in September, thus ending the energy- and ecology-intensive practice of crypto-mining. However, the shift to proof-of-stake failed to reduce transaction fees and bandwidth as once expected. Future changes, namely sharding and rollups, will solve these problems.

Elon Musk bought Twitter in October. Early reports predicted that Musk would add crypto features such as Dogecoin payments, which led to a surge in prices around the asset. But as the deal neared completion, it became clear that Musk had decided that blockchain-based Twitter was not possible and would not introduce such features.

FTX, formerly a leading crypto exchange, collapsed in November. The event caused a shock wave throughout the industry as companies including BlockFi, Genesis Trading and Voyager Digital were affected. FTX is now in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, which should dominate the news cycle into 2023 and beyond.