Crypto Market Recap May 2022

►May 2022 led to another correction in crypto assets overall. BTC fell -16% over the course of May, to a 10-month low. May 2022 volatility (79%) was on the higher end of historical observations, and turned out to be a more volatile month than April 2022 (49%) for BTC. Historically speaking, May is generally a positive month for BTC performance with a historical median return of +10%.

►Ethereum posted a loss of -29% in May 2022. Annualized volatility for ETH (100%) was higher than that of BTC (79%), and ETH’s volatility during May peaked to a 7-month high.

►All sectors saw negative returns over the month with losses all exceeding -17%. Layer-1, Metaverse, and Meme Coin sectors led the month with the biggest losses with -43%, -42%, and -39% returns, respectively. Bitcoin and Privacy coins performed the best on a relative basis, with -17% and -19% returns, respectively.

►DeFi as a whole saw major losses, ranging from -3% to -53% across the sector’s top assets. YFI took the biggest hit with a -53% drop in value.

►NFT markets on OpenSea slowed down in May as daily users and daily transactions were relatively flat with -7% and +1.1% changes, respectively. NFT volume saw a large decrease with daily volume dropping over -87%.

►BTC remained positively correlated with both the Nasdaq (0.95) and the S&P500 (0.94) equity indices during the month of May. Similarly, BTC’s correlation with U.S. Treasuries (0.50) and gold (0.72) grew month-over-month. This observation signals a broader trend of correlations between all asset classes rising amidst significant macroeconomic uncertainty.

►Whale activity for both BTC and ETH was relatively quiet over the month. Overall, Bitcoin saw a slight decrease in the number of whales and BTC held by whales while Ethereum saw a slight increase in the number of whales and ETH held by whales.