This is not a crypto winter. Here’s why.

No, it’s not a “crypto winter” ❄️

This term was coined in 2018, when Bitcoin price lost all of its bull run’s gains, and for the first time – at a scale involving general public. The ensuing devastation was so overwhelming that many crypto-related activities have simply stopped, including most of the trading, which lead to almost zero volatility for months.

This time is different.
While Bitcoin price has indeed wiped out most of the bull run’s gains, the current crypto landscape shows just how far the industry went since the last cycle.

? A big number of financial institutions, for which it was unthinkable to touch crypto just four years ago, now have their own crypto departments, proposing crypto products and services;
? Crypto is a major topic for regulators all over the world, and a number of crypto-friendly politicians emerge;
? Venture capital is still pouring into the space, and this year is on track to repeat last one’s $30 billion of investments into crypto companies (vs $1Bn in 2017);
? Crypto companies are still hiring people (yes, Coinbase is an exception in the general trend);
… and as a result of the above, crypto companies and still developing and building new applications.

In 2018 DeFi, NFTs and metaverse were very distant notions, and only about 100 DApps existed. Now there are thousands of DApps developed solely on Ethereum (with Solana, BNB and others trying to catch up), and most importantly – they are being used.

? Last week’s fees paid on the Uniswap DEX (decentralized exchange) exceeded the fees paid on the whole Ethereum blockchain ($4.9M vs $4.6M of average daily total). The activity on other DeFi platforms, such as Aave, Compound and Synthetix, is also booming.

? In crypto gaming, Splinterlands (a digital collectible cards game) counts 350k daily unique active wallets, Axie Infinity (a strategy game) – almost $3M daily trading volume, and the upcoming RPG game Illuvium sold out a number of its land plots for over 4k ETH worth $72M in the beginning of June (data from DappRadar).

NFT.NYC has attracted almost 4k people, and many interesting NFT projects continue to appear, as well as other crypto use cases and the general crypto adoption.

So while we are definitely living a crypto recession / bear market, this is not a crypto winter.
Let’s keep the Jon Snow memes for another time ?