JAKARTA – Throughout 2021, the crypto industry will experience astonishing growth stemming from the adoption of crypto, decentralized finance (DeFi) and Non-Fungible Token (NFT) digital arts. This is despite the market crash looming over cryptocurrencies.
However, interest in cryptocurrencies has experienced significant growth despite various policies that have caused the crypto market to plummet, including those carried out by China and America. However, the boom of NFT and the emergence of a number of smart contract networks that are faster are a positive sign of the crypto industry this year, as summarized from Cointelegraph below.
Kazakhstan
When China banned all Bitcoin mining activities and forced miners to leave the country, Kazakhstan was present as a new alternative and the government was also willing to accommodate BTC miners. Kazakhstan utilizes an abundant supply of coal as mining energy. As a result, a number of BTC mining companies have turned to it and set up mining facilities, including those by Bit Mining.
In July 2021, Kazakhstan's average monthly hash rate stood at 18.1 percent — that is, accounting for nearly a fifth of the world's Bitcoin mining output, second only to the United States (42.7 percent), and a stunning increase from just 1.4 percent in September 2019, according to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance.
Whether Kazakhstan will maintain its global share of BTC mining in 2022, given the country's widespread power shortage reports as winter approaches remains to be seen.
Coinbase
The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, Coinbase Global has become the first crypto company to be listed on a US stock exchange on April 14, 2021 on Nasdaq. Coinbase's stock price skyrocketed to close at $328.28 with a market cap of $86 billion. Even so, by the end of this year Coinbase's stock price had decreased significantly. It happened on December 18th, and its market capitalization was 52.37 billion US dollars.
Coinbase's listing on the Nasdaq is seen as a sign that crypto is already mainstream. “Coinbase will be the torchbearer for the entire blockchain community on the public market,” Kavita Gupta, founding managing partner at Delta Growth Fund, told Cointelegraph.
Solana
In 2021, Solana (SOL) has successfully launched its smart contract which has succeeded in making the price of SOL skyrocket. Solana uses a very fast and environmentally friendly Proof of Stake consensus. The transaction speed also reaches 50,000 transactions per second. In this case, SOL managed to beat Ethereum which has a transaction speed of 30 transactions per second.
“No project – perhaps in crypto history – has gotten hotter, faster than Solana in 2021,” wrote Ryan Selkis of Messari.
The open-source blockchain hosts a growing number of NFT and DeFi projects, though it is subject to several distributed denial-of-service attacks through 2021. The native cryptocurrency Solona (SOL) comfortably ranked fifth among all coins as of December 20 according to Selkis to Cointelegraph Markets Pro. SOL is just below BTC, Ether (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB) and Tether (USDT).
El Salvador
The recent move by the President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele in adopting Bitcoin as the official currency has made the country the center of attention of the world. It also has a positive impact on the global crypto industry. To support the adoption of BTC, the government distributed 30 dollars in Bitcoin (BTC) to every adult there.
In addition, the President of Bukele also announced that it is harnessing the energy of the volcano for Bitcoin mining. The mining proceeds will reportedly be used to build dozens of schools and animal hospitals in El Salvador. It didn't stop there, President Bukele also announced he would establish a "Bitcoin city."
The adoption of BTC is a new alternative to boost the country's economy. This is because El Salvador's economy relies heavily on remittances from its citizens working abroad.
NFT Digital Art Explosion
NFT's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" by Mike Winkelmann or commonly known as Beeple has sold for US$69.3 million. The explosion of NFT also changed the direction of the world's art industry. Whereas previously Christie's art house, which was preparing for an auction in February, became the first auction house to offer NFT digital works. Even Christie's didn't list the starting price for the “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” bid.
In the end, the work became the most auctioned work, surpassing the works of Georges Seurat, Paul Gaugain, and Salvador Dali. This catapulted the name of Beeple who was previously relatively unknown as contemporary artists who have the highest income in the world such as Jeff Koons and David Hockney.
The phenomenon serves as a warning signal to those outside the cryptoverse that NFT has become a new force to be reckoned with in contemporary art. NFT sales have been booming in 2021. Last November, "NFT" was declared "word of the year" by dictionary publisher Collins.
Avalanche
Avalanche is another fast smart contract network to enter the top 10 in 2021. “Solana and Avalanche are the new stars” among DeFi multichains, says CoinGecko, with 6 percent and 2 percent of total locked-in value, respectively (TVL). ), in the third quarter. (Avalanche hosts the Aave DeFi protocol.) TVL's gains come at the expense of Ethereum, which held nearly all of TVL's DeFi earlier in the year (99 percent). Its share was 76 percent at the end of the third quarter by comparison.
Avalanche's native currency, AVAX, was ranked 10th in end-December market value of $27.3 billion, arguably supported by its deal with Deloitte to support the consulting firm's work with the US Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Sam Bankman-Fried/FTX
In 2021, Sam Bankman-Fried was declared the “richest person in crypto” based largely on the strength of his stake in FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, which he founded in 2019.
By the end of 2021, FTX had become the second largest crypto derivatives exchange, according to CoinGecko, behind only Binance (Futures). Messari called FTX “the fastest growing company of all time,” noting that Bankman-Fried had built a $25 billion company in less than three years with less than 100 employees.
FTX closed a $900 million funding round in July that valued the exchange at $18 billion, up from $1.2 billion, with participation from SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin, VanEck and the Paul Tudor Jones family, among others. other. In June, FTX acquired the long-term naming rights for the NBA Miami Heat basketball arena.
OpenSea
The NFT phenomenon has become a boon for digital artists who can sell their work without agents and physical art galleries, but they still need a digital marketplace. OpenSea, the first mover in the NFT arts sector and a leading market, emerged as one of the biggest winners this year.
OpenSea takes a relatively cheap 2.5 percent commission for each sale on its platform, but it generated a substantial $79 million in revenue in August, peaking in 2021, according to consultant Cointelegraph. During the month of November, revenue exceeded US$235 million year to date (YTD). In December, not much has changed: “The world's dominant NFT market is cash-generating,” Messari said.
ProShares ETFs
In mid-October the launch of the first Bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF) approved by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) made a dramatic debut on the New York Stock Exchange as the second most-traded opening fund on record, calling it a “crucial moment for the crypto industry.”
The launch of the ETF ended eight years of futility on the part of U.S. fund issuers—the Winkelvoss ETF was the first to be rejected by the SEC in 2013—but some remain disappointed that the breakthrough fund is a futures-based ETF and doesn't follow Bitcoin (BTC) price movements directly. The SEC appears to prefer having two layers of regulatory protections – namely, oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the SEC – and this was further confirmed a few weeks later when the SEC rejected VanEck's application for a spot market ETF.
These are a number of positive developments in the crypto industry that will occur throughout 2021 as reported by Cointelegraph. This does not include the development of the metaverse often associated with NFT and crypto and play-to-earn games.
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