Bukele in El Salvador is credited with bringing some innovation and the light of the 21st century to a poor Central American region heavily dependent on remittances.
New Years Special
The cryptocurrency and blockchain industry saw explosive growth in 2021, particularly in decentralized finance (DeFi) and undistributed tokens (NFT).
The year was also marked by continued price volatility, startling behavior from China, a major test in Central America, increasing institutional interest and the rise of multiple contract networks, faster smart coins – all of which is reflected in this year’s list of “Industry Winners and Losers” . ”
When China effectively banned Bitcoin (BTC) mining in May 2021, Kazakhstan rushed to fill the void and draw the attention of displaced miners and others to the source of cheap and plentiful coal supplies. Many have settled in the Central Asian country, including BIT Mining’s leading crypto mining pool.
By July 2021, Kazakhstan’s average monthly hash rate is 18.1% – meaning it accounts for almost a fifth of global bitcoin mining production, after the US (42.7%) and an astonishing increase of just 1.4% . in September 2019, according to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance.
Whether Kazakhstan will hold its share of the global BTC mining market in 2022, given reports of widespread electricity shortages in the country as winter approaches.
Coinbase Global, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, was listed on the Nasdaq on April 14 as the first crypto company on a US exchange. It closed that day at $ 328.28 with a market cap of $ 86 billion, a breathtaking start that compares to Facebook and Airbnb’s IPOs. However, the stock price rallied later that year, trading at $ 243.35 on December 18, with a still strong market cap of $ 52.37 billion.
Coinbase’s listing is viewed by many as yet another sign that cryptocurrency has become mainstream and more public offerings will follow. Kavita Gupta, founding executive partner of the Delta Growth Fund, told Cointelegraph, “Coinbase will be the torch for the entire blockchain community in the public market.
In 2021, a new wave of smart contracts-enabled networks will emerge. The largest and fastest growing of them all is Solana, a super-fast proof-of-stake network that claims to have hit 50,000 transactions per second (TPS). For comparison: Ethereum has around 30 TPS.
“No project – possibly in crypto history – will be faster and hotter in 2021 than Solana,” wrote Messari’s Ryan Selkis. The open source blockchain is home to a growing number of NFT and DeFi projects, although it has suffered a number of distributed denial-of-service attacks through 2021, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro, followed only by BTC, Ether (ETH) , Binance Coin (BNB) and Tether (USDT).
El Salvador made history in 2021 – as the first country to declare Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender. The country’s dynamic president, Nayib Bukele, has captivated the crypto world with his deeds: harnessing energy from a volcano to power the country’s BTC mining operations, a fully functional city built around Bitcoin originally was funded with $ 1 million bitcoin bonds.
Only time will tell if all of this results in clear economic “gain” for the people of El Salvador, but Bukele argues that by purchasing these coins, a poor Central American will be given some innovation and the light of the 21st region whose economy is strong relies on remittances – money sent home by foreign workers.
When Kunsthaus Christie’s put a digital mosaic up for auction in February – the first major auction house to offer a fully digital work with a unique NFT – it didn’t even set a price. Nobody knows how to price it. Mike Winkelmann’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” (aka Beeple) sold for $ 69.3 million, and the art industry may never be the same.
Related: NFT ‘Art Revolution’: The Secret of His 5,040 Work Days for Love, Cointelegraph Magazine
To put this in context, the work sold more at auction than works by Georges Seurat, Paul Gaugain, or Salvador Dalí, making the relatively obscure Beeple a group of highly deserving contemporary artist Jeff Koons. It has also notified those outside of crypto that non-corrosive tokens will be a force to be reckoned with. NFT sales skyrocketed through 2021, and in late November “NFT” was named “Word of the Year” by Collins dictionary publisher.
Avalanche is another smart contract network that is rapidly making its way into the top 10 in 2021. “Solana and Avalanche are the new stars” among the multimodal DeFi networks, claims CoinGecko with 6% and 2% of the total price, respectively. each in the third quarter. (Avalanche hosts the Aave DeFi protocol.) Those TVL gains are at the expense of Ethereum, which holds almost all of the DeFi TVL at the start of the year (99%). In comparison, the market share at the end of the third quarter was 76%.
Avalanche’s native coin, AVAX, was ranked 10th in market value at $ 27.3 billion at the end of December, following a deal with Deloitte to support the consultancy’s work with the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In 2021, Sam Bankman-Fried was named the “Richest Man in Crypto,” largely due to his stake in FTX, the crypto derivatives exchange he owns.
According to CoinGecko, FTX was the second largest crypto derivatives exchange after Binance (futures) until the end of 2021. Messari calls FTX “the fastest growing company ever,” pointing out that Bankman-Fried built a $ 25 billion business with fewer than 100 employees in less than three years.
FTX closed a $ 900 million financing round in July and valued the exchange at $ 18 billion versus $ 1.2 billion previously, on which SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin, VanEck, among others, are and the family of Paul Tudor Jones were involved. In June, FTX acquired the long-term naming rights to the Miami Heat NBA basketball arena.
The NFT phenomenon is a boon for digital artists who can sell their work without a real art dealer and gallery but still need a digital marketplace. OpenSea, the market leader and NFT arts pioneer, emerged as one of the biggest winners of the year.
OpenSea takes a relatively modest 2.5% commission on every sale on its platform, but this resulted in sizable sales of $ 79 million in August, its peak month in 2021, as recommended by Cointelegraph. For part of November, year-to-date sales exceeded $ 235 million. Not much had changed by December: “The globally dominant NFT market is benefiting from its fists,” said Messari.
One hurdle was solved in mid-October with the launch of the first Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), which was sanctioned by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) made an impressive debut on the New York Stock Exchange as the second most traded opening day fund in history. Some call it “a first moment for the crypto industry”.
Its launch ended in vain for US fund issuers for eight years – an Winkelvoss ETF was the first to be rejected by the SEC in 2013 – but some are still frustrated with the surprise fund. Break is a futures based ETF that does not track Bitcoin (BTC) prices directly. The SEC seems to want two levels of regulatory protection – i.e. oversight both Commodity Futures Trading Commission and SEC – and that was confirmed a few weeks later when the SEC rejected VanEck’s application for a spot market ETF.
China controls two-thirds (67%) of the world’s cryptocurrency mining in September 2020, but in May it banned mining operations for reasons no one really knows. , but maybe it has to do with the need to digitally protect the central bank’s own currency (CBDC), which appears to be on the verge of full issuance.
In any case, Bitcoin’s hash rate dropped 50% immediately, which messed up the market a bit. However, other countries have rapidly improved their mining situation, including the United States, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Canada. In retrospect, many see China’s actions as a gift to the West. “Nice weather [Bitcoin] Analyst Willy Woo said.
Facebook’s stablecoin company Libra (now Diem) was announced amidst buzz and a list of blue-chip partners in 2019, but the project has been repeatedly delayed and scaled back. Not much is heard about Diem these days, except perhaps related to the exit – for example, Dante Disparte went to Circle, while David Marcus, head of crypto operations, recently said he would be leaving the company at the end of the year.
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