Cryptocurrency prices started to dazzle again in 2023
cryptocurrencies but overall, it would most likely be remembered as a reasonably good period in history when seen from the lens of blockchain’s evolution. Cryptocurrencies spiked significantly in the past year. Bitcoin prices rose by a whopping 165 percent, whereas Ether jumped by 84 percent between Jan 1 to Dec 20 in 2023.
This was quite a recovery on the heels of bankruptcy of Sam Bankman Fried-founded FTX, a US-based crypto platform, towards the end of 2022. In fact, a few days ago, a major crypto exchange Binance and its former CEO Changpeng Zhao were ordered by a US court to pay billions of dollars in fines for money laundering in a case filed by US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Zhao will pay $150 million and Binance will pay $2.7 billion to the CFTC.
Such major climb downs and bankruptcies are more than enough to shake the confidence of investors in what continues to struggle for something as basic as its identity that still oscillates between a “currency" and an “asset class". Although crypto prices reached their all-time highs in November 2021 amid pandemic when everything and everyone was talking of going digital. And digital currencies were not far behind.
However, the tide turned the following year i.e., in 2022 when normality started to return and digital currencies did lose some of their sheen. The year 2023, however, turned out to be a saviour of sorts when the prices recuperated rapidly, albeit not in entirety. Bitcoin, for instance, is yet not close to it's all-time high ($68,789), it has covered some of the yawning gap and has already touched $44,000 in the international exchanges.
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