The experience of companies both large and small has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride for the last two years, and the hills and valleys will not be ending any time soon. From a total shutdown in March 2020 to a somewhat healthy rebound in 2021, several recent factors have caused a new downturn in stocks, and companies are losing money and tightening their belts on spending. For a nation that was just getting its sea legs after the pandemic, companies simply cannot keep pace with the war in Ukraine, the slow exports from Covid-ridden China, the highest inflation in nearly 40 years, and a mangled supply chain. With so many difficulties that companies have to face at the same time, even many big-name companies are struggling.
Crypto Crisis
There is no doubt that the world of crypto is currently in a very dark place, but frankly, it is simply echoing the stock market, and both are looking rather sickly. The Federal Reserve hiked the rates in early May, and stocks are now experiencing a bear market. As a result, Bitcoin fell over 10%, now down over 35% year to date.
“Even as the flagship cryptocurrency has shed 20% of its value in the past week, the leading marketplace for digital assets has been nearly halved.”
Bitcoin itself is faring better than Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the United States, which fell after company estimates were way off and bitcoin trading plummeted.
Shares of the company are now down 74% for the year to date. What had looked so promising during 2021 has turned into a decidedly bad investment.
One reason shares fell so far and so fast is because institutional investors had started normalizing Bitcoin in 2021, with Tesla buying $1.5B and Wall Street banks like JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley joining in the fray. Crypto boomed with the acceptance from the mainstream companies, with the sector’s market capitalization growing 185% that year. And as the old saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they…
