2021 a “Break Out” Year for Cryptocurrency?

2021- It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  Speculation abounds over which altcoins are most favourably positioned to be cryptocurrency’s biggest GAINERS in the coming new year and would-be millionaires remain poised and at the ready to pounce on the exchanges. 2022.

A Look Back at 2021

However, a look back reveals that 2021 was a year of substantial achievements for the nascent digital assets market – a handful of these events were considered watershed moments at the time.  Signals that cryptocurrencies could not only stand up to the test of time, but also events that suggested cryptocurrencies had finally reached that oh-so-important stage of “mainstream adoption” – a key benchmark indicating a global embrace of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other commonly known cryptocurrencies by modern society.

2021 Cryptocurrency Achievements

The waning days of 2021 have been rocky for cryptocurrency investors, but it was undeniably a year that the cryptocurrency market reached a new level of maturity.  Below we share of the few of the most noteworthy achievements for cryptocurrencies in 2021:

• Celebrity CEO and Bitcoin mega-booster, Elon Musk, issued a series of public comments via Twitter that pumped up significant public interest in cryptocurrencies.  The Tesla CEO did put his money where his mouth was with an announcement in early 2021 that his company would be making a $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin.

• Proshares introduced the world’s first exchange traded fund (ETF) – the Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO).  More than 24 million shares worth over $1 billion were traded…on the first day.  Within 24 hours the fund had accumulated $570 million in assets.

• Crypto-investors partied the night away when the nation of El Salvador became the first country in the world [to consider Bitcoin legal tender, meaning all vendors in the nation are now required to accept Bitcoin as payment.

• Business intelligence powerhouse, Microstrategy, upped its Bitcoin holdings to the tune of $6 billion which the rest of corporate America would go on to interpret as “proof positive” that they too could start taking digital currency investing seriously.

• Industry leading financial companies like Venmo, Paypal, and even Mastercard setup their popular platforms to accommodate Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

• Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) crashed onto the scene in early March when a digital work of art that was created and sold as a unique NFT fetched over $69 million at a Christie’s auction. The name of the art was “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” and is simply a mosaic of illustrations and sketches created by a popular artist that goes by the moniker “Beeple.” 

• Finally, how could we exclude Dogecoin?  The market’s (and the world’s) first meme coin initially minted as a joke was introduced to an unsuspecting world and went stratospheric thanks to celebrity backing from Mark Cuban and Snoop Dogg.  Dogecoin had achieved a mind-boggling 12,000% increase in value by May of 2021.

2022 Cryptocurrency Predictions

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So, what’s to come in 2022?  Who’s to know for certain?

Bitcoin has been the industry titan since the market’s inception, but there are those who see Ethereum overtaking Bitcoin in the year to come.  Bitcoin is expected to reach $100,000 in the not-so-distant future, will 2022 be the year?  If we use 2021 as a guide, all we can say for sure is that anything is possible in this market.  It has evolved in both size and in public popularity – both trends you can expect to see continue in 2022.