Terra, Celsius, 3AC Wiped $53.5B From Crypto Portfolios — FTX? Only $9B

Crypto has survived far worse things this year than FTX implosion, Chainalysis has found

article-image

CryptoFX/Shutterstock.com modified by Blockworks

share

Chainalysis has calculated that two major crypto catastrophes leading up to FTX’s sudden bankruptcy were more damaging to crypto investors: Terra’s depegging in May, followed in June by collapses at Celsius and hedge fund firm Three Arrows Capital (3AC).

The firm measured realized gains and losses for all personal crypto wallets over the year, so no crypto exchange hot or cold wallets and the like. Chainalysis’ goal in three easy steps: Find at which point all wallets lost most of their value.

  1. Measure the value of each wallet’s assets at the time they were deposited.
  2. Subtract the value of any portion of those assets sent to another wallet.
  3. Account for price differences at different times the assets were acquired (“e.g. a wallet holding some Bitcoin acquired at $30,000 and some acquired at $20,000”).

“We can’t assume that any cryptocurrency sent from a given wallet is necessarily going to be liquidated, so think of these numbers as an upper bound for realized gains of a given wallet,” Chainalysis said.

“This methodology can therefore give us a directional sense of when investors lock in gains and losses.”

And so, Chainalysis says Terra’s failed algorithmic stablecoin wiped $20.5 billion from personal crypto wallets. Celsius and 3AC kicking the bucket sent values tumbling $33 billion.

FTX, on the other hand, seemed to have affected markets by a much smaller degree, only $9 billion.

Terra Celsius 3AC FTX

“These charts don’t take everything into account: For instance, people who used FTX likely lost any funds they kept on the exchange, and the likelihood of recovering them is unknown,” Chainalysis said. 

“But from a market-wide point of view, the data above suggests that as of now, the heaviest hitting crypto events of 2022 were already behind investors by the time the FTX debacle took place.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

  • Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
  • Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
  • Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
  • 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
  • Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
  • The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
  • Supply Shock: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.
Tags

Upcoming Events

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research

article-image

The platform also rolled out 13 tokenized funds for institutions on the Connect platform

article-image

The company’s expanded lineup introduces new ETF products, as more and more issuers get into crypto funds

article-image

President Donald Trump announced a 10% levy on almost all goods and additional tariffs on so-called “worst offending” countries

article-image

Solana may be in “recomposition” mode, as new protocols put usefulness ahead of mere virality

article-image

The stablecoin issuer will have to contend with bigger players and the interest rates environment

article-image

The president reportedly was still working on his tariff policy plans late Tuesday evening