Top 5 Events that Defined the Year 2022

The year 2022 has been a milestone for the tech industry. With advancements in technology and new trends emerging, the events of 2022 have resulted in a major shift in how we use and interact with technology. In today’s article, we will look into the events that left a mark and how it will have an impact on 2023.

Metaverse:

It has been a big year for the Metaverse and the gain in its popularity. It might seem new, but the term was first coined in 1992 in a sci-fi novel, "Snow Crash." In 2022, there was a significant increase in the creation of new Metaverse platforms, applications, and services, as well as a growing interest in immersive and interactive digital experiences.

This was driven by advancements in technology, including virtual reality, augmented reality, and blockchain, as well as a shift in consumer preferences toward more interactive and personalized digital experiences.

Multiple companies invested in Metaverse in 2022, such as Microsoft, Google, Epic Games, etc. Additionally, many traditional tech and media companies also invested in the Metaverse. They saw it as an opportunity to expand their reach, create new revenue streams, and stay relevant in an ever-changing technology landscape. The investments in the Metaverse in 2022 helped to further establish the Metaverse as a promising and exciting new technology sector and laid the foundation for its continued growth and development in the coming years.

Collapse of FTX:

The former Ceo and founder Sam Bankman-Fried, (often referred to as SBF) of FTX Cryptocurrency exchange and Alamenda Research went from being a billionaire to bankrupt in a year.
So it all started with Alamenda Research which made a fortune in crypto arbitrage by trading Bitcoin between the U.S. and Japan-PCMag. SBF later founded a Cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, in 2019, which grew exponentially by high-profile acquisitions, a massive marketing budget, and promising high returns.

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SBF became a poster boy of Crypto as he gained clout more people got on board.

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"In a round of funding in January of this year, FTX raised a whopping $400 million to bring the total funding up all the way to $2 billion and the valuation to $32 billion."-Forbes

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Unfortunately, it went downhill when Coindesk published an article detailing Alamenda Research's main asset, FTT, the native FTX token.

The reason why it raised concerns was because FTX was using FTT as collateral. Which meant that all the assets were tied down to an unstable and risky token. Furthermore, Binance announced that they will be selling their FTT, that was equal to 530 million dollars. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, posted a series of tweets announcing that they will be liquidating FTT.

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After this, all investors rushed to take their investments out, but FTX couldn't process the withdrawal that reached 6 billion dollars within 72 hours. It basically meant they didn't have the money the investors were trying to withdraw.

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The next step for FTX was asking for help which it did from Binance. But the deal didn't go through; Binance backed out after the due diligence was the final nail in the coffin. As a result, the FTX exchange had no choice but to file for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022.

NFT Reality Check:

2022 has been a rocky year for cryptocurrency and NFTs.

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"The average price of an NFT sale has also decreased rapidly, by 92% since the beginning of May 2022, falling from $3,894 to $293," according to Chainalysis’s July 2022 data

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NFTs are linked with Crypto; therefore, due to a decrease in overall prices in crypto of about 24%, led to a rapid decline in the price of NFTs. Some of the best-performing NFTs, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, saw their prices slashed by almost half in August 2022.

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When NFTs were introduced, it created hype, and there was a huge demand when luxury brands and celebrities entered the market. Artists like Beeple sold a single NFT for over 69$ million dollars.

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When these numbers circulate, anyone will be interested; therefore, NFTs skyrocketed. But this hype was not sustainable because any market driven by impulse buys and hype will eventually burn out, which happened to NFTs. It is speculated that this market crash is said to be a market correction rather than a market crash that is making up for the hype.  

NFT transactions require the use of large amounts of computational power to verify and secure them, which in turn consumes a significant amount of electricity. This energy consumption has a significant carbon footprint, contributing to climate change. This is another reason for the decline in NFTs prices is because it has raised environmental concerns due to the high energy consumption. Some initiatives explore alternative blockchain technologies with lower energy consumption to address these concerns.

Elon musk bought Twitter:

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"The world's richest man, Elon Musk, has completed his $44bn (£38.1bn) takeover of Twitter, according to a filing with the US government."-BBC News

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After taking over, Twitter Musk fired over half of the staff including CEO Parag Agrawal to reinstate the account of former President Trump and some other accounts.

There have been erratic decisions by Musk that have led Twitter to turmoil. As a result, marketers have started to take off, and Musk has suggested that the company might be on the brink of bankruptcy.  

Elon Musk has also been tweeting about finding a replacement for his position as CEO as he faced backlash for suspending a couple of journalists.

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Unfortunately, there have been no winners on the matter of why it happened and what was the end goal. Meanwhile, there has been confusion and disarray amongst Tesla investors as its shares fell 56% in 2022. The investors have been concerned as Musk isn't able to juggle too many things at once.

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ChatGPT:

Since its debut in November 2022, ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer)has been the talk of the town, and it is still trending and will for a while.

GPT has been around for a while, but the older version produced low-quality output compared to an average human. But ChatGPT uses an upgraded AI system that performs a wide range of tasks, from writing an essay to generating business ideas.

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"ChatGPT doesn't exactly know anything. It's an AI trained to recognize patterns in vast swaths of text harvested from the internet, then further trained with human assistance to deliver more useful, better dialog. The answers you get may sound plausible and even authoritative, but they might well be entirely wrong, as OpenAI warns."-Harvard Review.

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Furthermore, it is still in its beginning phase, and there are constant updates to improve customer experience. OpenAI encourages user feedback, as mentioned on their website"Users are encouraged to provide feedback on problematic model outputs through the UI, as well as on false positives/negatives from the external content filter which is also part of the interface."

They also launched a contest with a chance to win 500$ in API for further incentive.

Conclusion:

Looking back at 2022, it is clear that technology will continue to have a significant impact on our lives. There have been new trends, such as the increased use of artificial intelligence, the growth of virtual reality, and ChatGPT.

Some events went downhill and might take a while to recover from. But nonetheless, technology will continue to progress, and we will continue to look at new events, and I'll sum up those events for you guys. So stay tuned, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact us for a free consultation!

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