The Coming Recession is Going to Hit Crypto, but Not as Hard as You Think

cryptonews.com:

If a recession isn’t here already, many economists estimate that it is coming very soon. The largest in the world, the US economy contracted by 1.6% in the first quarter of the year, and even if it somehow doesn’t contract in the second quarter, a growing number of economists are predicting a recession for 2023.

There’s no doubt it’s a bad time for the global economy right now, with inflation reaching 40-year highs and central banks threatening a series of rate hikes. It’s also a bad time for the crypto market, seeing as how prices have fallen steeply around the same time that economic activity has shrunk.

However, opinion is mixed on whether we’ll see a severe recession in the coming months (or years), and it’s also mixed on whether any such recession would have a big impact on major cryptoassets. That’s because there’s an argument that cryptoasset prices aren’t correlated with the global economy so much as stock markets, which could rally again if inflation subsides and rate increases stop.

Many economists and analysts seem to agree that the US -- and many other developed economies -- are already in recession, given that the technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

“The squeeze on people's disposable incomes caused by high inflation has had a big negative impact on stocks & crypto markets, and has probably already pushed the US economy into recession. Recent surveys of consumer confidence are showing their worst readings for decades, people are feeling the pain and are cutting back on investment as well as on spending,” said Glen Goodman, a cryptoasset analyst and author of The Crypto Trader.

Despite a general consensus that the economy is shrinking right now, some commentators