Bitcoin, Ethereum set for worst year since 2018

It’s been a rough year for crypto prices, with two major coins on track for their worst annual performance in four years.

For the year through Thursday evening, bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-0.43%
was down 64.2%, while Ethereum
ETHUSD,
-0.03%
was posting a slide of 67.6%. Both were on pace for their worst year since 2018, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Bitcoin was off 0.6% at $16,521 in recent trade, according to FactSet, while Ethereum was off 0.4% near $1,195.

The cryptocurrency market has been hard hit this year, losing over $2 trillion in value since its peak in 2021. In the first half of the year, every major cryptocurrency price dropped, a major stablecoin collapsed, and crypto companies faced financial difficulties or even bankruptcy.

Read: ‘I just wake up and cry’: Voyager and Celsius bankruptcies have destroyed some crypto investors’ confidence in centralized platforms

Scandals and hacks also hit the sector, and victims lost over $3 billion to hacks. Lack of regulation in crypto and larger macroeconomic trends have been major factors in the industry’s losses this year.

Overall, the period of market cooling has been dubbed “crypto winter.”