Cryptocurrency transactions in the past year; From global declines to 40% growth in transactions in Iran

Last year was an important year in the global cryptocurrency market. In May 2022, after reaching the price ceiling of $120, Luna reached a value close to zero within a month, which caused the loss of more than $50 billion of capital in the cryptocurrency market.

The price of Bitcoin also fell to the bottom of $15,782 and compared to May, when it reached the price ceiling of $32,000, it dropped by almost 50%, which caused it to be called the fall of Bitcoin.

The FTX trading platform also went bankrupt in November 2022. The reason for this bankruptcy was the sale of unregistered securities in the state of Texas and the investigation of this exchange.

But in such an environment, the cryptocurrency industry continued to grow. Last year, new businesses were interested in entering this industry, which led to the growth of this industry in providing new services in various payment platforms and cooperation with various industries compared to previous years.

The rate of Tether/Toman fluctuated a lot last year and increased by almost 50% in the second half of the year. After reaching the price ceiling of 62 thousand tomans, this rate was revised to 46 thousand tomans.

In 1401, 367 new cryptocurrency exchange platforms were identified, which made the number of these platforms reach 704 servers in 1401. In fact, cryptocurrency exchange platforms grew by about 109%. The growth of platforms in 1400 and 1401 was more than before.

The statistics of Tetherland’s annual report of the platforms that were connected to the payment portal in different years show that there were 89 operating platforms in 2018 and 122 operating platforms in 2019. This amount reached 337 in 1400 and then with a growth of 109% to 704 active platforms at the end of 1401.

Increasing the number of platforms by creating a competitive environment will reduce the price of services and provide better service to users.

The Tether Foundation’s 2022 data results show that funds settled through Tether were by far more than MasterCard and Visa, two examples of the largest payment service companies. Mastercard settled funds were $7.7 trillion and Visa funds were $14.1 trillion. On the other hand, the amount of 18.2 trillion dollars of funds settled through Tether shows the popularity of Tether among stablecoins.

Tether also has the largest market size compared to similar coins. Last year, Tether took more than 8% of the global cryptocurrency market share and reached its highest historical level. Tether has an even greater share in the Iranian market and domestic exchange platforms than international exchange platforms. Different reasons such as the lack of direct access to international accounts and the problems of businesses in financial transfers make those interested in investing in the international currency market choose Tether as an alternative solution.

This feature has caused the volume of Tether to Toman exchanges to account for 23% of cryptocurrency transactions in Iran, while other cryptocurrencies share a total of 77% of this market.

This volume of exchange happened while Tether has experienced extreme fluctuations in the past year, although it has been on an upward trend all this time. The annual rate of Tether has increased by an average of 2.8 times since 2017, and last year the average rate of Tether experienced a growth of more than 30%. The growth rate of Tether compared to Toman has doubled since 2019, and the rate of Tether has grown by 6.1% per month in 2018.