👉 Looking back on the year that was in crypto

Monday, January 3rd, 2022

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TL;DR

2021 Ends, New Possibilities Open Up For The Cryptocurrency Industry in 2022
2022 Cardano Plans Outlined By Charles Hoskinson
Square Enix Eyes Decentralized Gaming Growth
Despite 2 Months of Negative Price Action, Bitcoin Bull Trend Remains In Tack
Altcoin Dominance Hover's At Critical 60% Market Dominance
The North American Bitcoin Conference | Jan 17-19 | Miami

MACRO NEWS

2021 Ends, New Possibilities Open Up For The Cryptocurrency Industry in 2022

To say that 2021 has been an eventful year for the cryptocurrency industry would be an understatement. Whether it was Bitcoin (BTC) experiencing a new ATH (all-time high) price or going through a massive crash thanks to the ban by China’s government, to the groundbreaking achievement by El Salvador as it became the first country in history to make BTC legal tender, to ‘meme’ cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) bulldozing their way up the charts in the crypto market, to the still ongoing craze surrounding both NFTs and the metaverse, it is fair to assume that 2021 had many noteworthy developments, to say the least.

With that being said, many in the cryptocurrency community have already begun speculating on what to expect for the industry as 2022 begins, and whether the year will be filled with substantial profits or crushing losses, or perhaps a mixture of both.

The main highlights of what to expect

Even if it is not as exciting as 2021, the new year shall in all likelihood witness significant changes including but not limited to the debut of Ethereum 2.0 and the further development regarding the metaverse. Furthermore, as the sector matures, there will be lots of funds which will be accumulated to finance the continuous creation of new and innovative ideas, as well as plenty of possibilities to become increasingly involved with DeFi. There are also significant real-world elements that will most likely continue to impact the sector, ranging from U.S interest rates to record-breaking inflation to different COVID variations.

Moreover, as far as price action goes, it can often prove difficult to accurately predict the price of any given cryptocurrency simply because there are so many other uncontrollable factors like the recent introduction of the Omicron COVID variant (which disrupted both the crypto and the stock markets). We can therefore anticipate the cryptocurrency market to still experience relative volatility and be largely flat for at least a considerable amount of time this year. On that note, a major downturn on the scale of 2018 is unlikely, but if 2021 is anything to go by, then it is far better to expect the unexpected anyway.

One aspect that some may be happy to hear though is that unlike 2021, celebrities such as Elon Musk will most likely not have the same level of impact in terms of affecting the cryptocurrency market as they did in 2021. Perhaps the most famous example of this was when the Tesla CEO managed to bring DOGE into the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization through sheer hype, endorsement and popularity, which also saw the canine-themed token’s price surge to reach a new ATH. Now though, many investors and traders would most likely prefer to do their own research rather than base their portfolios on the advice of someone else or whatever is trending, which is always good to see.

More regulations

Nowadays, it is becoming increasingly likely that many governments would much rather prefer regulating cryptocurrencies rather than imposing a blanket ban, as had been recently discussed by Senator Cynthia Lummins who is also one of the key advocates for the cryptocurrency industry. Stablecoins such as USDT will also most likely end up being more regulated in the near future.

Ultimately, nobody knows exactly what is going to happen in 2022. Most of the recent developments have been positive however, with MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor continuing to buy more BTC, the U.S government being more open to talking with industry leaders rather than opposing them, and the skyrocketing potential of the metaverse and the P2E (Play To Earn) concept all pointing toward a beneficial year for the sector indeed.

2022 Cardano Plans Outlined By Charles Hoskinson

In a half hour Christmas Eve lecture on YouTube, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano and IOG, its development foundation, detailed some of the network's expansion ambitions for 2022 and talked about what to expect for the new year.

He stated that the primary objective for the second half of 2022 is to find out how to bring everything together to successfully have an end-to-end microfinance transaction through Cardano. According to the founder, a framework that controls the construction of decentralized products on the Cardano network will be created and a formal open-source project structure shall be developed, similar to that of Hyperledger to Linux.

Cardano is a PoS (Proof-of-Stake) blockchain which was established in 2015 and debuted in 2017 as an alternative to his former project, Ethereum. It is a blockchain that depends on network validators to execute transactions for ADA, which is the native currency for Cardano, in addition to maintaining the network itself. Cardano has been one of the most popular and successful projects in the cryptocurrency space in 2021 and ADA is currently ranked as the 6th highest cryptocurrency by market capitalization with a current price of $1.38.

Did Cardano reach its goals in 2021?

Cardano has already been chastised for failing to meet its declared objective of being entirely decentralized. IOG issued a document in 2020 outlining how it planned to decentralize its block manufacturing, an aim which had been satisfactorily met in April 2021. During that time, the network also became completely community-governed and operational, and in September, the public introduction of smart contracts on Cardano enabled the network to finally be able to host dApps.

Additionally, Hoskinson stated that there had been a tweet from 2020 in which he had discussed the anticipation of having thousands of dApps and hundreds of assets on Cardano by 2021's end, however he has since stated that he was mistaken on both accounts. Instead of hundreds, he claims that there are now over two million assets released on the Cardano network, the vast majority of which are supposedly non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Still, Charles claims that we have yet to see considerable traction regarding the network's expansion of decentralized applications, and that this was mainly because of the Goguen update’s delay. This upgrade was the one to finally add the highly anticipated smart contract capability to the network.

What can Cardano supporters expect for 2022?

Cardano's goals for 2022 hence involve fortifying the network's institutions and expanding its use beyond Africa. In addition, developers are similarly working on various CIPs (Cardano Improvement Proposals), which are a set of community-governed network modifications that are scheduled to become available in 2022. Some of these features involve human-readable information for Cardano assets as well as a native online wallet for dealing with decentralized finance protocols. According to Hoskinson, next year will thus see the construction of the aforementioned true open-source framework and the further realization of Cardano's true potential.

In related news, Charles also discussed the present condition of the cryptocurrency sector, claiming that the regularity with which hacks, thefts, and other types of attacks were occurring was partly due to many projects prioritizing speed and success above substance and security.

Square Enix Eyes Decentralized Gaming Growth

Square Enix, a well-established and renowned gaming company, has revealed its intentions of expanding its presence in blockchain-oriented gaming for this year. Yosuke Matsuda, the company's president, spent the majority of a recent letter addressing "decentralized gaming", exclaiming high hopes of this becoming a key trend for the gaming sector moving forward.

Blockchain game technologies already exist, and there has lately been a surge in societal literacy along with overall acceptance of cryptocurrency assets as well. Some of the more well-known blockchain gaming projects include the likes of The Sandbox (SAND) and Axie Infinity (AXS).

President Matsuda thus stated that his company shall be keeping an eye on social trends in this sector from now on, in addition to observing the various user groups who occupy it along with scaling up Square Enix's efforts to further develop the company appropriately, with the end-goal of perhaps releasing their own respective tokens in the near future.

President Matsuda also stated that as popular as NFTs have become recently, there are still many gamers who remain hesitant to become involved with these non-fungible tokens.

CONTENT OF THE WEEK

Buying $94 Million In Bitcoin, Bored Ape 11, Crypto Mega Ban, No One Cares & Binance Swipes

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TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

Despite Two Months of Negative Price Action, Bitcoin LT Bull Trend Remains In Tack

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Altcoin Dominance Hover's At Critical 60% Market Dominance

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We at CryptoWeekly are not Financial Advisors. None of the content or opinions expressed in this newsletter should be considered financial advice. We highly recommend that you do your own research before investing in any project within or outside the cryptocurrency space.

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👉 Looking back on the year that was in crypto

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