Traditional markets performed better than crypto markets in December

Every once in a while, it happens that traditional assets in financial markets perform better than crypto assets during certain periods. 

Traditional vs. crypto markets

It happened in December 2021, as revealed by CryptoCompare, which is when the crypto market was almost constantly in the red, while some traditional assets instead held up. 

For example, the price of ETH lost more than 20%, while the NASDAQ 100 essentially broke even. 

However, despite recent market movements, major cryptocurrencies posted strong gains during 2021, with returns in excess of 50%. For example over the same period, gold lost 3.8%, the S&P500 returned just under 27% and the NASDAQ 100 21%.

The numbers for 2021

Notably, volatility remained much higher, with BTC making 65.3% in 2021, compared to 20.6% for the S&P500 and 28.8% for the NASDAQ 100.

CryptoCompare also found that the number of addresses with ETH balances grew by 3.9%, reaching a new all-time high of 68.8 million in December. 

In addition, USDT and USD trading volumes in December decreased for all major cryptocurrencies except just ETH for which they increased by 2.7% and 2.5% respectively. 

ADA volumes saw the biggest decline, by 25% and 27% respectively.

DeFi’s TVL fell to $153 billion in December, with -13.8% on Ethereum and -22.4% on Solana. 

But commissions paid in total for all transactions recorded on Ethereum’s blockchain also fell, for the first time in six months. The drop was 36.9%, with the average cost per transaction being $30.87.

Finally, CryptoCompare also reveals that Ethereum was inflationary for the entire month of December, as the network burned through a daily average of 7.98k ETH for the entire month.