Index

‘Everything bubble’ bursts: Worst year for US stocks and bonds since 1932

While the crypto markets have taken a bashing in 2022, it hasn’t exactly been rosy for US stocks, bonds and real estate either.

It’s been a torrid year for investors, and not just those in crypto, with United States (U.S.) bonds experiencing their worst year in centuries and U.S. stocks pulling back nearly 20% since 2022 began.

As of Nov. 30, a Financial Times report noted that a traditional portfolio consisting of 60% stocks and 40% bonds will have seen its worst performance since 1932, when the U.S. was in the midst of the Great Depression.

Nominal return for US stocks and bonds from 1871-2022. Source: Financial Times.

Meanwhile, tech stocks, which some theorize have a correlation with cryptocurrency prices, haven’t had a great year either.

An index tracking the performance of U.S. companies in the industry recorded a loss of 35.76% for the year.

Household tech giants such as Netflix, Meta, Zoom, Spotify and Tesla have all had particularly difficult years as well with their share prices falling in the range of 51% and 70%, according to Yahoo Finance.

Even the “safe as houses” real estate sector has started to show signs of pain, with the most recent data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency showing that U.S. house prices were stagnant through September and October.

Return for an index tracking the stock performance of U.S. companies in the technology industry throughout 2022. Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices.

These stock and sector declines may help put the current crypto winter into better perspective, noting that total crypto market cap fell from $2.25 trillion to $798 billion throughout the year, representing a drop of 64.5%, and crypto billionaires recorded huge losses.

Some of the crypto crises that have occurred throughout 2022 include the bankruptcies of FTX, Celsius and Three Arrows Capital, as well as the collapse of the Terra network, among others.

Related: BTC price preserves $16.5K, but funding rates raise risk of new Bitcoin lows

According to a Dec. 30 tweet by investment analyst Andreas Steno, “every single asset class” is down significantly in 2022, and real estate is soon to follow.


Blockchain indexer The Graph says adoption is still strong 2 years after mainnet launch

More than 10,000 delegators have since joined the blockchain indexing network.

According to data provided to Cointelegraph on Dec. 15, network growth still appears to be strong for blockchain indexer The Graph. Launched two years ago, The Graph Network allows developers to easily search, index, use and publish data from public blockchains.

From November 2021 to November 2022, the total number of developers on The Graph (both active and inactive) increased by 145% to 38,000. During the same period, average GRT query fees per month increased by 1,191% to 354,000, while total lifetime GRT queries on the decentralized network increased by 984% to 5.2 billion. Finally, total subgraphs, or proxies for applications, increased by 122% to 641 on the decentralized network in the same period.

Since the network launched, over 200 indexers, 10,000 delegators and 2,500 curators have been onboarded to the blockchain. Over 500 subgraphs migrated from the original hosted service to the fully decentralized network. It currently indexes data from 39 blockchains, including Ethereum, Near, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, Celo, Fantom, Moonbeam, IPFS, Cosmos Hub and more. The total number of subgraphs has grown from deployed in decentralized applications has grown from 3,800 at launch in December 2020 to 74,000 now.

Commenting on the results, Eva Beylin, director of The Graph Foundation, stated: 

“For The Graph Network’s 2nd birthday it’s incredible to see our Graph Advocates organizing celebrations in their cities around the world. When I think about the growth over the last two years, I’m blown away by the Advocates’ dedication to The Graph’s mission to support web3. This community is inspiring.”