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New Year’s Special

Analysts say 2022 will be ‘defined by agility and cost-efficiency’ instead of ‘blockchain purity’

In addition to BTC price hitting $100,000, analysts expect the crypto market to pivot toward “cost efficiency” and “agility” in 2022.

The entire crypto market took great strides toward mass adoption in 2021 and now that the year is nearly complete, analysts are setting their price targets for 2022.

Many analysts supported calls for a $100,000 (BTC) price before the end of 2021 and although this seems unlikely, most investors expect the key price level to be tackled before Q2 of 2022.

Here’s a look at some of the Bitcoin price predictions analysts are expecting in 2022.

Bitcoin is still on track to surpass $100,000

Analysts has been more reticent in providing off the cuff Bitcoin predictions ever since PlanB's stock-to-flow model incorrectly predicted a $98,000 BTC price by the end of November, even though the model had been spot on from August through October.

While some traders are now questioning the validity of the stock-to-flow price model, crypto analyst and pseudonymous Twitter user ‘DecodeJar’ still sees BTC surpassing the $100,000 price point within the next few months and according to the analyst, the price could climb as high as $250,000 by the end of 2022.

As shown in the tweet above, DecodeJar sees Bitcoin hitting a ”conservative price target” of $190,233 by June 7 based on Elliot Wave extensions and Fibonacci retracement levels.

In a follow-up tweet, DecodeJar cautioned that:

“Projections of future price and time are only a guide, but combining this range with other indicators as we get closer, can allow for a clean exit near the top. I favor the more conservative end of the scale ~$190,000.”

Regulations are coming in 2022

Insight into the future of the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem was addressed by David Lifchitz, managing partner and chief investment officer at ExoAlpha, who stated that “crypto’s will still be around in 2022” in the sense that “governments won’t ban them.”

Instead, Lifchitz suggested that “they want to regulate them to keep cryptos on a tight leash vs. fiat currencies and also see them as a source of taxable income to replenish their coffers.”

As the DeFi ecosystem continues to grow and develop new capabilities, Lifchitz predicted that banks and insurances companies will be forced to adapt their business models in order to stay competitive while “middle-man businesses are more at risk as they are made redundant by DeFi.”

When it comes to the frenzy that has been the NFT space, Lifchitz expressed reservations about the sector’s ability to continue its lightning-like pace of growth and he addressed some of the deeper concerns that regulators may have moving forward.

Lifchitz said,

“It has become so hot that one cannot help but wonder if they are not used for money laundering... I know there's so much money sloshing around thanks to the central banks that has to find a home, but the NFTs in 2021 remind me of the Dot.com era in mid-1998, there's still room for a parabolic price boom, then a bust.”

As far as the hype around the emerging Metaverse, Lifchitz stated that while it does look as though we are headed to a future that could resemble scenes from the movie Ready Player One “where people take refuge into a virtual world since their real world is terrible,” our world is still “years away from that.”

Related: Creating a pathway for crypto market growth through better regulation

Mass adoption is likely to continue

Despite the signs of short-term weakness, Loukas Lagoudis, executive director of crypto and digital assets hedge fund ARK36, “firmly believes that the overall bullish trend for the crypto market will continue in 2022.”

Lagoudis suggested that “the sustained adoption of digital assets by institutional investors and their further integration into the legacy financial systems will be the main drivers of growth of the crypto space in the next year” as institutions were seen as starting to favor “digital assets over gold as a reserve asset” over the course of 2021.

Lagoudis said,

“In addition, since digital assets have consistently outperformed traditional asset classes, we predict that investors will see allocation to digital assets as a part of their risk management strategy - especially given the increasingly inflationary economic environment and the declining bond yields.”

According to Jean-Marc Bonnefous, head of asset management at Tellurian ExoAlpha, suggested that “the trend seems to be favoring blockchains that focus on performance, dApp development and that are somewhat more centralized.”

Bonnefous saithis represents a significant change from the trends of the past which centered more on projects “focused on security, store of value and that are more decentralized like BTC and even Ether.”

Bonnefous said,

“Basically, the market seems to go for business agility and cost-efficiency rather than blockchain purity, a big change from the past years. This winning relative value trade is likely to continue into next year.”

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Whales Abruptly Accumulate Over $346,000,000 Worth of Top-10 Altcoin in Just One Week, Says Analyst

Crypto mainstream adoption: Is it here already? Experts Answer, Part 3

What does mass adoption mean for the blockchain industry? Has it started yet? If not, what could get it going?

Tim Draper of Draper Associates and Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Tim is a pioneer of business ventures in the United States and a co-founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading investment firm in early-stage tech startups.

“I think anyone with a young brain already has a wallet. The rest will follow. The same thing happened with internet adoption.”

These quotes have been edited and condensed.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Sebastian Markowsky of Coinsource

Sebastian is the chief strategy officer at Coinsource, a Bitcoin ATM provider in the United States.

“In 2022, we expect more countries to follow El Salvador’s lead and adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, particularly countries across Latin America and Asia. As a result, we anticipate an increase in the number of Bitcoin ATMs across Latin America, and also in Europe. As new countries adopt, it is likely U.S. dominance in the crypto industry will be reduced.

Regulation of crypto will continue into 2022, which is generally a good thing. However, it must be reasonable and fairly applicable to all. We have the potential to solve compliance in many of the protocols once and for all, so we need to double down on this. The industry is on a good path to increase the standards by which it measures compliance, but there needs to be a dialogue between experts on both sides of the regulatory debate.

Nefarious activity within the crypto space has been on a steep decline for several years now. Alignment on regulation, such as in the EU with MiCA, will create a level playing field that will allow for continued growth in the long term. We hope the U.S. will soon follow in providing regulatory clarity and guidelines that will keep it on foot as a key hub for global crypto innovation. 

We have witnessed huge growth within the Bitcoin ATM, or BTM, industry in 2021, with global installations up by 70%. We do not see this slowing down any time soon. With so much activity in the market and the strong demand for BTMs from all sorts of known and new target customer groups, we believe that the BTM space will continue to grow at a similar, or even faster, rate. It is projected that the number of BTM installations will hit 100,000 by 2025, and we would say that this is a conservative estimate.”

Rodrigo Vicuna of Prime Trust

Rodrigo is the chief financial officer of Prime Trust, a blockchain-driven trust company that provides API-driven open banking solutions.

“Over the past 12 months, the digital asset industry has matured significantly. From exchange-traded funds to celebrity endorsements to stadium naming rights, crypto has moved from a niche market of early adopters to more mainstream awareness. New and exciting use cases continue to emerge, and innovation continues to push blockchain technology forward, integrating with the wider financial sector by allowing crypto holders to use their tokens as payment.

 To reach critical mass adoption, we need increased participation from a diverse set of investors that want access to crypto, as this increases liquidity and builds out the market infrastructure. Wealth management platforms are servicing this need by building customized solutions for independent registered investment advisors (RIAs), an area of the crypto market that is taking off. For more conservative investors, the lack of regulation in the market might be keeping them on the sidelines. To overcome investors’ concerns, wealth management platforms will need stronger compliance programs to address the advanced technological nature of digital assets such as stablecoins, clearer guidance from regulators for national banks integrating crypto, and more robust cryptocurrency crime and tax evasion laws. With more confidence among general investors, we believe crypto will continue to see strong mass adoption across sectors.”

Michael Kong of Fantom Foundation

Michael is the CEO at Fantom Foundation, a layer-one EVM-compatible platform that is fast, scalable and secure, built on a permissionless aBFT consensus protocol.

“Mass adoption has been ongoing for several years. Over time, we are seeing cryptocurrencies becoming more and more mainstream. For example, a few big pension and retirement funds in the U.S. and Australia have begun making investments in the space, something that has never happened before.

We will continue to see accelerated crypto adoption as more and more mainstream companies and governments participate in it.”

Marc Seal of Sortium and CryptoGene

Marc is the CEO of Sortium, the company developing CryptoGene, a play-to-earn Web 3.0 game.

“With the explosive growth in NFTs this year, I think we are now tracking toward much wider adoption of cryptocurrency, blockchain and associated technology. We are seeing Fortune 500 corporations court the NFT industry, financial and lending institutions adopt DeFi, and retail investors enter the crypto market en masse. Current reports state that nearly 20% of the U.S. is invested in cryptocurrency in some way. We are still early but are on the precipice of mass adoption.”

Joshua Tobkin of SupraOracles

Joshua is the co-founder and CEO of SupraOracles, which develops a blockchain network that uses real-time data on the financial markets for a secure interface and DeFi smart contracts.

“This year has been a big one for cryptocurrency. Not only has the market made significant gains, but we are seeing increased adoption from the ongoing use of DeFi and the huge amount of interest generated from NFTs. To continue to see the market grow, we need to improve DeFi security and increase competition in the oracle space. Once these issues have been resolved, I think we will see even more traditional finance businesses moving to cryptocurrency. Also, I think that blockchain games and GameFi will likewise be a boon for our industry as we steadily march toward greater mass adoption.”

James MacFarlane of Eden Network

James is the head of business development at Eden Network, an optional, non-consensus-breaking transaction-ordering protocol for Ethereum blocks. 

“In 2021, we have seen the spark of mass adoption, but we are nowhere near there yet.

Household brands like Coke and Pepsi are using ‘GMI’ and ‘NGMI’ in their social media posts, and millions of people got into crypto to buy memecoins like Dogecoin.

A lot of consumers are now well aware that cryptocurrency exists; however, they still just see the base layer of coins like DOGE and Bitcoin. Mass adoption will come from the general person understanding the level of utility cryptocurrency provides.

Under the surface, we are seeing a revolution of the banking and transaction settlement layer, but the general public has not seen or understood this just yet. Large brands pushing their audience into blockchain seems like a good way to move users into the space.”

Filipe Gonçalves of Ankr

Filipe is the DeFi architect at Ankr, a scalable protocol built to offer multichain infrastructure for plug-and-play DeFi solutions and multichain staking for DeFi. 

“With nation-states like El Salvador adopting Bitcoin and more countries considering central bank digital currencies, they will soon realize that cryptocurrencies are not just a means of payment but the native currency of a broader blockchain where they need to build their government services and eventually change the very poor foundational banking layer that exists. Things like bank settlements and trade settlements take two to three days to settle. In blockchain, this type of transaction finality is simply unacceptable, but that’s what’s happening in traditional finance. This is when decentralized applications and smart contracts can power the new economy and enable true scalability across the two ecosystems.”

Chris Kalani of Phantom Wallet

Chris is the chief product officer of Phantom Wallet, a Solana wallet built for DeFi and NFTs.

“We’re seeing more and more people entering the space who have never used crypto before. This may not necessarily mean mass adoption, but we’re seeing a faster growth rate than ever before.

Cheaper blockchains are allowing new use cases and new audiences to start to onboard and experiment with DApps.

Mobile is the giant unlock for reaching the mass adoption level. Traditionally, it has been slow and expensive to use DApps — but now that it’s cheap and fast with layer one’s like Solana, we’re going to see a whole bunch of people flood the space and be able to access Web3 for the first time.”

André Neves of Zebedee

André is the chief technology officer of Zebedee, which enables programmable payments and small transactions to power economies for virtual worlds.

“Mass adoption is definitely picking up, especially as Bitcoin, in particular, reached new levels of legitimacy in the eyes of investors, banks, corporations and entire nations. All the attention led to more active interest among the broader public but also highlighted the need to make it easier to onboard people. I think the key to unlocking the next tier of adoption lies in Bitcoin gaming, which offers a less intimidating use case and much simpler onboarding experience for people looking to earn and use crypto for the first time.”

Alex Shipp of Offshift

Alex is the chief strategy officer of Offshift, a decentralized application dedicated to privacy-centric storage and exchange.

“It most certainly has not. Because cryptocurrency’s earliest applications involve financial applications, it has certainly been more conducive to speculation than other nascent industries and technologies. That being said, crypto’s use case potential extends far wider than the array of meta use cases we have seen in the DeFi and NFT spaces. Until DeFi begins competing with commercial banking, until publicly traded companies are shifting some portion of their shares to decentralized systems to compete with synthetics, until cryptocurrencies are used in point-of-sale transactions in place of fiat currency, adoption remains ahead of us. To that end, financial institutions exploring cryptocurrencies as hedges against inflation is exciting for the space, but it does not constitute adoption.”

Introduction

During 2020 and 2021, the number of unique crypto wallets increased at a rate of around 20 million per a year, making the count stand at around 80 million today. That means that in only two years, the number of people involved in the space has doubled. Just think about it: That’s more than 1% of the entire planet’s population! And the more people get involved, the more will follow. Isn’t that mainstream adoption? It is for me. 

But that’s just my opinion. To gain more insight on the matter, I reached out to different experts from the crypto and blockchain industry, asking them: “With 2021 coming to an end, in your opinion has crypto’s mass adoption already begun? What could help it reach the level of mass adoption it needs?”

Whales Abruptly Accumulate Over $346,000,000 Worth of Top-10 Altcoin in Just One Week, Says Analyst

From DeFi year to decade: Is mass adoption here? Experts Answer, Part 3

Decentralized technologies’ insiders shared their views on DeFi and the role, achievements and challenges the space faced in 2021.

Tristan Frizza of Zeta Markets:

Tristan is the core contributor to Zeta Markets, an under-collateralized DeFi derivatives platform, providing liquid derivatives trading to individuals and institutions alike.

“We’ve seen a Cambrian explosion in the DeFi ecosystem in 2021, with peak TVL approaching $300 billion vs the 2020 peak of $21 billion. This sounds like the growth surely has to slow. Yet, DeFi still represents just a fraction of CeFi trading volumes.

At Zeta, we see a clear opportunity for more and more CeFi infrastructure to be built on-chain in a permissionless manner. This will unlock innovative products that have previously been impossible to implement. The following has already started to happen:

  • Composability trumps the siloed products of CeFi, which has created really powerful network effects and will continue to do so.

  • DeFi UX continues to improve, DApps on Solana, in particular, are now improving with the looks and feels of CEX products (i.e., Robinhood).

  • On-chain derivatives are still in their infancy but are already showing promise (dYdX surpassing Coinbase in trading volume).

  • On-chain primitives like oracles and order books are now a reality.

DeFi growth sustaining itself and achieving its potential blockchain speed and transaction costs will be critical. CeFi markets rely on speed and deep liquidity. This dependency is already showing some truth, with DeFi expanding outside of the Ethereum ecosystem. We suspect this is a trend that is likely to continue in 2022 and expand the DeFi pie as a whole — cross-chain bridging will be a big theme for DeFi in the years ahead as we move toward a multi-chain world.”

These quotes have been edited and condensed.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Simon Lapscher of Liquality

Simon is a co-founder of Liquality, a multichain browser extension wallet.

“I think we can all agree that DeFi protocols remain at an early stage relative to the wider crypto industry. According to DeFi Llama, the total value of crypto assets in DeFi surged from roughly $5 billion to nearly $160 billion over the past year, but this is largely because of crypto traders and investors, not due to wider mass adoption. As Ethereum layer twos and alternative layer ones like Terra, Solana, Avalanche and others mature, more and more user-facing applications no longer need to deal with prohibitive gas fees, which will significantly drive adoption. This, combined with incredibly easy-to-use and incentivized DApp integrations at the wallet level, will be what drives DeFi and other areas further into mass adoption territory. If you can be anywhere in the world, download a mobile app, and go from fiat to over 20% yield in Anchor (Terra) in just a few clicks without having to understand complicated blockchain concepts, it’s a game-changer.”

Rodrigo Vicuna of Prime Trust

Rodrigo is the chief financial officer of Prime Trust, a blockchain-driven trust company that provides API-driven open banking solutions.

“DeFi has grown significantly over the last year, from around $700 million in 2020 to an estimated $60 billion to $80 billion in TVL in 2021. Some are estimating this to grow even more in 2022. Mass adoption of DeFi sits somewhere between the early adopter stage and mass growth. Institutional investors are increasingly adding Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies to their portfolios, and worldwide adoption of crypto has jumped by over 880%. This shows that the digital asset and crypto industry has further expanded into the mainstream. 

For 2022, we anticipate a convergence of institutional and individual users in addition to typical integrators. One of the challenges that DeFi still faces is the costly entry point for new users. Crypto is still unknown for many users, and the volatility and varied regulations from governing bodies are adding to this unknown; however, new and nascent market segments will continue to emerge. Over the past year, we’ve seen a 200% increase in alternative trading systems for digital assets, a 120% increase in registered investment advisor wealth-tech platforms, a 54% increase in infrastructure businesses like trading firms and blockchain development platforms, a 47% increase in retail crypto on-ramps and neobanks, and a 22% increase in crypto exchanges using our platform. We only expect this growth and adoption to continue throughout 2022.”

Paolo Ardoino of Bitfinex

Paolo is the chief technology officer of Bitfinex, a digital asset trading platform offering state-of-the-art services for digital currency traders and global liquidity providers.

“DeFi continued to grow this year. As far as 2022 goes, I would encourage people to look at the Lightning Network as being, in many ways, DeFi in its truest form. Unlike many of the non-Bitcoin-based chain projects that often have a speculative component based upon the appreciation of a protocol’s token, the Lightning Network is all about payments and building services. 

In a way, DeFi — with all its lending pools and projects running these lending pools — is more centralized than the Lightning Network. The Lightning Network has a different concept of DeFi, where you can interact directly with a single entity or person without any intermediary. 

It will be interesting to see how the growth of the Lightning Network in 2022 plays out, especially in the context of the DeFi component being latent within the technology. This is an area that it could well be worth keeping an eye out for.”

Mark Lurie of Shipyard Software

Mark is the CEO and co-founder of Shipyard Software, a software company building DEXs for retail crypto traders.

“No, we are a long way from mass adoption of DeFi. There is certainly massive capital at play, including traditional institutions like Goldman Sachs setting up DeFi desks, but the total universe of DeFi users is only several hundred thousand people. The reason is because it is technically complicated to hold one’s own crypto and use DeFi applications. I find it hard and sometimes need to ask friends for help, and I’ve founded a DEX! Until it is simple, it won’t be adopted by the masses. But it won’t be simple until regulations are clarified, allowing companies to develop more user-centric DeFi applications.”

Johnny Lyu of KuCoin

Johnny Lyu is the CEO of KuCoin, a secure cryptocurrency exchange that makes it easier to buy, sell and store cryptocurrencies.

“The growing interest of institutions in cryptocurrencies is likely to remain the decisive driving force behind the decentralized finance industry. All the corporations that have shown their penchant for cryptocurrencies this year, like Paypal, Visa and MasterCard, are probably already working out plans on how to break into this market. That said, the scenario, which implies that DeFi products will become available in popular banking applications as early as 2022, looks quite realistic.”

James MacFarlane of Eden Network

James is the head of business development at Eden Network, an optional, non-consensus-breaking transaction-ordering protocol for Ethereum blocks. 

“If we look at the DeFi adoption journeys for consumers, we have centralized exchanges, then wallets and then decentralized exchanges. 

We have seen a huge growth in users on the CEX layer, but 2022 will be the year of the wallet and DEX for the mass market.

Users understanding the value in moving from the CEX layer to wallets like Rabby and Argent that give users very simple user interface journeys into DeFi will be the next stage of adoption in 2022.”

Donald Thibeau of the HBAR Foundation

Donald is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of the HBAR Foundation, which helps the development of the Hedera ecosystem by providing grants and other resources to developers, startups and entrepreneurs.

“DeFi in 2020 proved the ability of communities to come together to form financial markets without intermediaries, but it did not yet reach mass adoption over the course of 2021. We saw horizontal growth as similar DeFi protocols deployed across multiple chains and the beginning of vertical growth. The latter is critical to mass adoption. Vertical growth in DeFi refers to the inclusion of protocols generating yield and fees for users into more financial markets, banking infrastructure and more. We are seeing the beginning of this integration with organizations like Shinhan Bank experimenting with stablecoins and DLA Piper supporting token issuance platforms. DeFi in 2022 will be defined by its incorporation into traditional banking as well as application to new marketplaces beyond finance.”

David Chaum of XX Network

David is the founder of XX Network, a consumer-scale, quantum-ready online platform that enables value to be communicated and exchanged without revealing so-called “metadata.”

“Everything is already global in 2021, and we have been on a decentralization trajectory for more than a decade. Corporations have been (sort of) decentralizing for years. Central banks around the world are rushing to create their own non-decentralized cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, some small countries are replacing their fiat currency with Bitcoin. You know we’ve reached mass adoption in DeFi, though, when the Feds come knocking. Besides, DeFi is so 2020 — NFTs are 2021. And look at the latest congressional hearings — you’ll see that the government certainly thinks mass adoption is here. Their intentions are still to be decided, but I would venture to guess they do not come in peace.

Cross-chain currency trading peer-to-peer, with no expensive intermediaries — that would help DeFi. So would additional privacy measures. DeFi needs to look back at its original goals — to be truly trustless and anonymous — and reimagine privacy into all future applications.”

Brad Yasar of Eqifi

Brad is the CEO of Eqifi, a decentralized finance platform for borrowing, trading and investing in digital assets backed by a regulated bank.

“2021 saw a mix of COVID still affecting our daily lives and ability to earn a living and opening the global trade and financial market after a very abnormal 2020. As a result, most people started looking at alternative options to going into a bank branch to get loans, as well as alternative assets to invest in to diversify from traditional stock-and-bond types of investment. This opened up people’s minds to crypto assets and decentralized finance products that diversify from traditional brick-and-mortar solutions. Combined with the already strong momentum DeFi had at the start of the year, we saw a significant increase in both the DeFi and crypto market caps.

With continued adoption by traditional financial businesses and increased education for the general public, I see continued strong growth for DeFi in 2022. Licensed and regulated projects like Eqifi are paving the way for a transition from anonymous, high-risk DeFi platforms to safer, more transparent versions that will be much more inviting to non-crypto and non-technical people looking to benefit from the high returns of DeFi that they have not been able to use up to this point. DeFi democratizes access to financial products that traditional banking and financing solutions have not been able to provide. With DeFi, we can offer more products cheaper to a much larger portion of the world population. If done right, this will be an excellent catalyst for global financial recovery.”

Alexander Mitrovich of Unique Network

Alexander is the CEO and co-founder of Unique Network, a scalable blockchain for composable NFTs with advanced economies, and an NFT chain built for Polkadot and Kusama.

“Mass adoption of DeFi was not reached in 2021. What we saw was a rising adoption of crypto, mainly centralized crypto. Coinbase’s popularity does not equal DeFi adoption. What I do think is that DeFi would benefit from closer integration with nonfungible tokens. When NFTs become powered by DeFi, when typical consumers can collateralize their NFTs through DeFi, when DeFi powers the creative economy — that is when you will see quicker adoption of DeFi and all its benefits.”

Alan Konevsky of PrimeBlock

Alan is the chief legal officer of PrimeBlock, a sustainable Bitcoin mining operation and infrastructure solutions provider with locations spread across North America, and a part of the Bitcoin Mining Council.

“In terms of cryptocurrencies as technology pathways for other decentralized finance products and services, there has been good pick-up. To get into the larger threshold of adopters, it will take a combination of regulatory improvement, innovation, retail-facing products and services, and greater interoperability with legacy banking and financial services, because people are not moving 100% into DeFi right away.

Increasing institutional and retail acceptance of blockchain and digital infrastructure is critical. Obviously, Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies being accepted as an investable asset type is an important thing, and it’ll continue on its own. However, the really secular change here is the acceptance of distributed digital solutions as the new technology pathways for payments, banking and so on. It’s the acceptance of blockchain technology as the next-generation environment for banking and finance.”

Introduction

In the broadest way, the discourse surrounding crypto has shifted from “what to do with it” to “how to do it.” This is especially the case with the authorities, which are no longer trying to deny decentralized finance but rather trying to figure out how to deal with the industry, as it is clear to everyone that it is here to stay. And their approach is that they either adjust or they will be left behind. This is the same with the legacy finance system: Decentralized finance (DeFi) projects provide better solutions, and people are starting to realize that — not just tech enthusiasts, but regular people. Hearing about DeFi from a taxi driver, from people chatting while waiting in line in a supermarket or during an intermission in a theater — that’s where I see indicators of mainstream adoption.

To gain more insight on the matter, I reached out to different experts from the blockchain industry, asking: “After 2020 was named the year of DeFi, did we already see mass adoption of decentralized finance in 2021? What could help it gain even more adoption going into 2022?”

Whales Abruptly Accumulate Over $346,000,000 Worth of Top-10 Altcoin in Just One Week, Says Analyst

10 women who used crypto to make a difference in 2021

These 10 inspiring women made things happen using crypto and blockchain in 2021, one block at a time.

This year, new research showed that there’s still a long way to go before there is gender parity in the crypto and blockchain space. WEF’s April Global Gender Gap Report 2021 found that it will take close to 135.6 years to close the gender gap due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, that hasn’t stopped these women who used blockchain technology and cryptocurrency to tackle a whole range of social issues ranging from girls’ education in developing countries to the wealth gap in black communities in the United States.

In no particular order, these 10 women are changing the world using crypto one block at a time.

Tavonia Evans

Tavonia Evans is the founder and lead engineer of GUAP Coin, which she created to help close the wealth gap and support black-owned businesses in the United States. Despite being hospitalized with COVID-19 and facing sweeping funding cuts, Evans says that her company accomplished more this year than ever before.

“We’ve onboarded hundreds of women of color into the Masternode space, an area of crypto that is largely male-dominated,” she told Cointelegraph. 70% of GUAP nodes are owned by women of color.

“We’ve sparked awareness about crypto among a population with less access and education in crypto and finance — and we continue to do so.”

This year, the company onboarded its first brick-and-mortar merchants. It also launched the xGUAP wrapper on Binance Smart Chain.

Lisa Wade

Lisa Wade was the 2021 recipient of Blockchain Australia’s Gender and Diversity Leader of the Year award, which recognized her work advocating for women and LGBTIQ+ people in the blockchain industry.

She is the founder of NEOMI, an investing ecosystem that connects charity entrepreneurs looking to raise capital with investors looking for authentic impact investments. Wade explained to Cointelegraph:

“NEOMI has a lens on our theory of change, which supports LGBTI and female entrepreneurs.”

Wade is also the chair of NAB Pride and pioneered the Australian bank’s “Rainbow Women” initiative, which gives LGBTIQ+ women a space to speak about issues that are holding them back on career development in the finance sector.

She also continued her work in environmental activism, co-creating a blockchain initiative called Project Carbon which tokenizes voluntary carbon credits.

Olayinka Odeniran

Olayinka Odeniran is the founder and Chairwoman of Black Women Blockchain Council (BWBC), which is working toward increasing the number of black female blockchain developers to half a million by 2030. 

Over the past year, the BWBC partnered with blockchain software company Consensys to help African people throughout the globe get involved in crypto.

She also launched a room on social audio app Clubhouse called “What The Hell is Blockchain” and a community site where members can network and learn about everything from nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

In case this wasn’t keeping her busy enough, she also released a social impact NFT collection CyberMermaid through ocean conservation nonprofit The Dope Sea.

In 2022, Odeniran plans to host a month-long event for Women’s History Month in March and release a new program to teach African women about NFTs and blockchain.

Maliha Abidi

Maliha Abidi is a Pakistani-American author and internationally acclaimed visual artist. She founded ‘Women Rise NFTs’ this year. The collection of 10,000 NFTs represent diverse women from around the world including activists, artists, scientists and coders. 

The collection has been featured on the front page of Rarible and at DCentral Miami. Abidi also had an artist residency during Art Basel in Miami.

According to Abidi, so far, 2,350 NFTs from the collection amounting to over 150 Ether (ETH), around $591,000, have been sold to 1,200 unique buyers including some big names like Randi Zuckerberg and Gary Vee. 10% of the total profits from the project will be donated to charities supporting women and children.

Abidi’s major project for next year will be the creation of the world’s first metaverse school for marginalized children from around the world.

Lavinia Osbourne

Lavinia Osbourne is the founder and host of Women in Blockchain Talks (WiBT), which is a female-led educational platform in the United Kingdom where women can network and learn about blockchain. She told Cointelegraph:

“Getting started in this revolutionary space is key to change and adoption, so Women in Blockchain Talks wants to make this as easy as possible for people — women and marginalized groups in particular — to do just that.”

This year, WiBT launched the 50k women into Blockchain by 2023 campaign, which Osbourne explained to Cointelegraph will “show that blockchain is for everyone as well as highlight the different pathways” to get involved in the space.

Osbourne also founded the upcoming female-centric Crypto Kweens NFT Marketplace, which is currently being built on the Rarible protocol.

WiBT introduced a Middle East ambassador to expand their international reach to women and marginalized groups wanting to learn about blockchain technology with translated versions of their educational material.

Jen Greyson

Jen Greyson is a Utah-based advocate of women’s empowerment through cryptocurrency and a board member for Kerala Blockchain Academy (KBA) in India. 

KBA trains women in STEM and blockchain to become leaders in the space. In 2021, it introduced several new blockchain courses, including two free foundation programs. The Academy trained close to 7,000 students this year, with over 6,000 students enrolling into the foundation programs in less than four months.

She told Cointelegraph: “The blockchain training program aimed to equip start-ups and individuals with the requisite knowledge, skills and attitude” needed to crack into the sector. Greyson added further:

“While my home state of Utah is languishing in even getting computers in every school for every student, across the globe, KBA did this in 2021 while navigating a pandemic.”

This year, the Academy’s vaccine traceability solution Immunochain was selected for a government health program in Kerala. KBA also developed a blockchain-powered multi-party document signing and verification system called Sign-A-Doc.

In 2022, Greyson will be launching an NFT podcast and an academy “focused on bringing more crypto education to the feminine.”

Manasi Vora

In May this year, Manasia Vora co-founded the Komorebi Collective on Syndicate, becoming the first investment DAO focused on funding female and non-binary crypto founders.

She is also the founder of the non-profit Women in Blockchain (WIB), which aims to provide a space for women to mentor each other about blockchain and crypto. “We aim to connect women to thought leaders in this space to inspire, collaborate and encourage others,” she said in a LinkedIn post. On Dec. 15, WIB tweeted:

“Crypto is about shared abundance and shared ownership. But this isn’t possible if the underrepresented communities are not included in the building, in the design, in the decision-making!”

Roya Mahboob

Roya Mahboob is not only an internationally-recognized activist but was also one of very few female tech CEOs in Afghanistan before being forced to flee in September this year when the Taliban took over control of the country.

She is the founder and CEO of Afghan Citadel Software Company (ACSC), where over half the employees are women. Because many Afghan women are unable to access a traditional bank account, she pays her employees in Bitcoin. In an August interview with CoinDesk, she said:

“If young people can learn about computers, they can learn about Bitcoin. And now everybody wants to learn how to access Bitcoin. They need to.”

She is also a board member and president of the Digital Citizen Fund (DCF), a non-profit aiming to educate girls and women from developing countries about technology and finance.

Mahboob also sits on the advisery board of Ashford University’s Forbes School of Business & Technology and recently created EdyEdy, a platform that helps young people from developing countries learn practical digital literacy skills.

Cleve Mesidor

Cleve Mesidor is the author of My Quest for Justice in Politics & Crypto, and a former appointee of the Obama administration.

She was appointed as public policy adviser at Blockchain Association in March this year and is a Mayoral Appointee for the DC Innovations and Technology Inclusion Council.

She is also the founder of the National Policy Network of Women of Color in Blockchain, and LOGOS, a social platform on the blockchain for activists.

Alakanani Itireleng

The Botswanan “Bitcoin Lady” Alakanani Itireleng is the CEO of the Satoshi Centre, which educates members of her community on how they can make money from crypto and blockchain technology.

The self-funded center is in the process of developing an incubator where startups will be able to network with potential sponsors or mentors.

She has campaigned for the Bank of Botswana to regulate and legitimize Bitcoin as a legal currency and is also developing a local crypto wallet that will be able to directly connect to regular ATMs.

In a July interview with Forbes, Itireleng said, “I was feeling that there’s something about Bitcoin that is unique, that is different from normal fiat money.” She added further: “I always call it a currency of love.”

Whales Abruptly Accumulate Over $346,000,000 Worth of Top-10 Altcoin in Just One Week, Says Analyst

5 cryptocurrency projects that made waves in 2021

UNI, AAVE, CRV, AXS and DOGE are a few of the top cryptocurrency projects in 2021 that helped transform the face of the cryptocurrency ecosystem and paved the way to mass adoption.

2021 was a breakout year for the cryptocurrency market in many respects and most investors are absolutely thrilled that Bitcoin (BTC) price established a new all-time high of $68,789. In the same timeframe, Ether (ETH) went on a parabolic rally which saw its price gain 565% from Jan. 1 to hit a record high at $4,859 on Nov. 10.

While it was a banner year for large cap cryptocurrencies, some of the biggest gains and most impactful developments came from the altcoin market where decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) rallied by thousands of percent and helped to usher in a new level of awareness and adoption for blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.

Here’s a look at five altcoin projects that made significant contributions to the cryptocurrency ecosystem in 2021.

Uniswap

The decentralized exchange Uniswap (UNI) has arguably had the greatest impact on the crypto ecosystem as a whole since launching in the summer of 2020, with the DEX seeing significant growth throughout 2021 as it helped facilitate the launch of thousands of new crypto projects by removing the barriers to launch that existed on centralized exchanges.

Data provided by Dune Analytics shows that Uniswap has been the dominant DEX throughout the year and it has consistently seen more trading volume than all other DEXs combined.

Monthly DEX volume by project. Source: Dune Analytics

As seen on the chart above, the volume traded on decentralized exchanges really started to ramp up in the second half of 2021 led in large part by activity on Uniswap.

Throughout 2021 Uniswap led the field in development as well, with the developers behind the protocol announcing the release of Uniswap v3 in March. The v3 upgrade included multiple protocol upgrades and it built the foundation to integrate layer-two scaling solutions like Optimism and Arbitrum with Uniswap as a way to help reduce the transaction costs and processing times for users.

Aave

Aave (AAVE) is a DeFi lending protocol that allows users to deposit their tokens and lend them out as a way to earn a yield or pledge them as collateral in order to borrow another asset.

As the DeFi sector started to gain traction in early 2021, AAVE emerged as a community favorite thanks to the wide swath of crypto assets supported and the backing from some well-funded players.

Over the course of the year, AAVE expanded its capabilities and reach with the release of AAVE v2 which added support for Polygon, a layer-two scaling solution, and Avalanche, which is a popular cross-chain blockchain network.

Total liquidity on the AAVE protocol. Source: Aave

As a result of these added capabilities, the total liquidity available on the AAVE protocol has surpassed $25.7 billion, making AAVE the top-ranked DeFi protocol by total value locked (TVL).

Curve

Curve Finance is a stablecoin-focused protocol that utilizes an automated market maker to manage liquidity on the platform and across the DeFi ecosystem.

Stablecoins have emerged as a foundational piece for the cryptocurrency community as a whole in 2021 because they provide sufficient liquidity for the market and a safe haven for traders seeking shelter during periods of high volatility. 

The growing importance that stablecoins have benefited Curve protocol and its native CRV by accelerating its integration of stablecoins into many of the top DeFi protocols, including the Yearn.Finance ecosystem and Convex Finance.

Despite the fact that a significant portion of the assets locked on the Curve protocol are stablecoins, the platform now ranks as the second leading protocol in terms of TVL behind AAVE, with data from Defi Llama showing that $21.77 billion in value is now locked in Curve vaults.

Total value locked on Curve. Source: Defi Llama

Curve has also integrated with many of the most active blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Avalanche, Harmony, xDAI, Polygon, Arbitrum and Fantom, which is further evidence of the protocol's quest to be the stablecoin liquidity provider for the entire crypto market.

Related: US Financial Stability Oversight Council identifies stablecoins and cryptos as threats to financial system

Axie Infinity

Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn (p2e) trading and battling game that allows participants to collect, breed, raise, battle and trade NFT-based creatures called Axies.

The p2e model emerged as a new fan favorite over the course of 2021 because it provides users with the ability to earn a daily income alongside their gameplay, which offers a few unique advantages when compared to the traditional pay-to-play model.

Alongside the rise in popularity of Axie Infinity came a new all-time high for the platform's native AXS token. As the token stormed to new highs, the platform generated a daily revenue of $17.55 million at its height on August 6.

Axie Infinity price vs. total revenue. Source: Token Terminal

Axie Infinity was also one of the earliest projects to establish the trend of migrating away from the Ethereum network because of high fees and slow transactions. Earlier in the year the project migrated to the Ronin sidechain and in November the project launched its own DEX called Katana.

Dogecoin

Dogecoin is an open-source proof of work cryptocurrency that leads the field of “meme” coins that made headlines all throughout 2021.

While the project has few contributions on the technological or development front, frequent shilling from the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban helped to push Doge into a 23,746% rally that saw the price rise fr from $0.0031 on Jan. 1 to an all-time high of $0.74 on May 8.

DOGE/USDT 1-day chart. Source: TradingView

On top of the gains seen in DOGE price, the token received increased attention after it was announced that it would be used to help fund the launch of a lunar satellite by SpaceX and the Dogecoin movement also kicked off a meme-coin rally and spawned a bevy of copy-dog projects li Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dogelon Mars (ELON).

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Whales Abruptly Accumulate Over $346,000,000 Worth of Top-10 Altcoin in Just One Week, Says Analyst

Crypto mainstream adoption: Is it here already? Experts Answer, Part 2

What does mass adoption mean for the blockchain industry? Has it started yet? If not, what could get it going?

Yaniv Tal of The Graph

Yaniv is the co-founder and CEO of Edge & Node and a co-founder of The Graph, a decentralized indexing protocol used by blockchains such as Ethereum.

Mass awareness of crypto and Web3 has already started. Celebrities, mainstream media and even the U.S. government are all talking about crypto. The next stage is for usage to exceed speculation, which we see coming very soon. As the Web3 stack solidifies, better applications will become possible with network effects around composable data that will launch Web3 into widespread use.

These quotes have been edited and condensed.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Simon Peters of eToro

Simon is the crypto analyst at eToro, a social trading platform that offers investing in both stocks and cryptocurrencies.

“2021 has been a significant year for crypto assets. From the launch of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF to El Salvador making Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin its legal tender and the birth of a ‘Bitcoin City,’ crypto is increasingly being adopted as a mainstream financial instrument. 

 Bitcoin and Ether have seen exceptional returns in the current bull market, reaching fresh all-time highs. Bitcoin, specifically, has achieved some key milestones, with Tesla buying $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin — arguably the most high-profile Bitcoin transaction this year. Additionally, Taproot — the first upgrade in four years to the Bitcoin network — has opened doors for developers to integrate new features improving privacy, scalability and security on the network.”

Sergey Gorbunov of Axelar

Sergey is the co-founder and CEO of Axelar, a universal interoperability network securely connecting all blockchain ecosystems, applications, assets and users.

“As we move forward into 2022, there are more blockchain networks than ever before, and mass adoption has begun. This coming year, it’s critical that these chains are developed to communicate with one another so that assets such as tokens, NFTs and smart contract information can be transferred between chains. This represents a significant challenge for the year ahead. In 2021, we saw developers and blockchain firms approach this problem by attempting to build one-off bridges between two networks, or interoperability add-ons to connect various components of their ecosystem. This has proved to be inefficient and adds unnecessary security risks for the ecosystem, as these approaches often rely on a centralized party moving assets from one chain to another. Despite the existing challenges, we now see the demand and have a huge opportunity to accelerate the blockchain space by connecting these siloed blockchains. In the coming year, we’re going to witness the development of singular, universal infrastructures that help blockchain ecosystems achieve true interoperability, taking the industry a step closer to mainstream adoption.”

Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com

Roger is an early Bitcoin adopter and investor. He is the executive chairman of Bitcoin.com, a site featuring cryptocurrency news in addition to an exchange and wallet service. He is also one of the five original founders of the Bitcoin Foundation.

“Crypto’s mass adoption started the day Satoshi released Bitcoin to the world and was accelerated by the launch of the Silk Road.

The more people use crypto as cash, the more adoption it will have around the world.”

Paolo Ardoino of Bitfinex

Paolo is the chief technology of Bitfinex, a digital asset trading platform offering state-of-the-art services for digital currency traders and global liquidity providers.

“Crypto has undoubtedly entered the mass consciousness this year. Still, in terms of using Bitcoin for payments and services, we are far from achieving mass adoption. This will inevitably change as the growth that we’ve witnessed in the Lightning Network continues to accelerate.

The Lightning Network has capabilities beyond those of current operating systems within both the crypto space and traditional financial ecosystems. With the potential to oversee millions of transactions per second, an extraordinary advancement, it far exceeds payment providers such as Visa, which currently manages about 60,000 transactions per second.

The adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador has also been an important juncture on this journey as major corporations adopt the technology as a means of facilitating payments. If you look at where crypto was five years ago, there were few projects coming to fruition with tangible results. Now, in 2021, we’re seeing everyone from Twitter to small businesses looking to integrate cryptocurrency in some way. In three years, the majority of businesses that have the capacity to facilitate crypto payments will do so, with many utilizing the Lightning Network. While I would not like to make specific predictions as to when the Lightning Network will achieve mass adoption, I believe this is inevitable in the years to come. At the end of the decade, we will be standing in a very different place.”

Martha Reyes of Bequant

Martha is the head of research at Bequant, a digital asset exchange and prime broker.

“Yes! Recent data shows 100 million Indians and 27 million Americans hold crypto, suggesting it is becoming more mainstream. Globally, only around 3.9% of people have digital assets to date. This is over 300 million people, suggesting mainstream adoption is well underway. However, these are still modest numbers, as crypto has the potential to be adopted by billions in the coming years.

For institutions, adoption this year has risen dramatically. At Bequant, we have seen increasing interest from traditional financial institutions, with rising trading volumes in 2021, and expect this trend to continue as more players see the trading and investment opportunities in the crypto space.”

Leemon Baird of Hedera Hashgraph

Leemon is the chief scientist at Hedera Hashgraph, a sustainable, enterprise-grade public ledger for the decentralized economy.

“The distributed ledger market saw traction with real-world applications in 2021, and I expect this usage to explode in 2022. After years of interest within a small blockchain community, we’ll see it become a major force in the world economy and society. The market is so nascent — we’ve barely scratched the surface of what the technology can do both for both personal and business use. When the iPhone was launched, the App Store was a mere glimpse of what it would look like today. Early apps, like a digital lightsaber, were entertaining. But today, I can conduct essentially all my business functions on my phone — using robust, interoperable apps for banking, work, socializing and more. This has driven the explosion of the ecosystem, and I expect we’ll see the same for applications that require decentralized trust.”

Johnny Lyu of KuCoin

Johnny is the CEO of KuCoin, a secure cryptocurrency exchange that makes it easier to buy, sell and store cryptocurrencies.

“Mass adoption is inseparable from the recognition of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment around the world, and there are some difficulties with this. Given the interest and real actions from institutional investors, the outgoing year can be called quite successful for cryptocurrencies.

We cannot ignore the exponential growth in the use of cryptocurrencies among the global population. The number of active crypto addresses, the number of smartphones with installed digital wallets, and the trading volumes on crypto exchanges continue to grow. Surprisingly, this growth does not depend on regulators’ and administrations’ stances on digital assets. The spread of cryptocurrencies is also increasing even in countries where their use is restricted or prohibited. I think Satoshi Nakamoto would be pleased with the way cryptocurrencies are sweeping away regulatory barriers.

To sum up, we can talk about the active process of the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. When exactly this process began is a debatable question. We can probably take the date of publication of Satoshi’s article ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,’ the launch of the Bitcoin network or the first post on Bitcointalk as countdown starters, as all these events are links in a single chain called the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies.”

Hatu Sheikh of DAO Maker

Hatu is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of DAO Maker, which creates growth technologies and funding frameworks for startups while simultaneously reducing risks for investors.

“Yes, and without a doubt, crypto’s mass adoption has begun at the grassroots levels, with retail users increasing by the day. The outlook toward crypto, as an investment, is growing in optimism and is helping fuel more people into this space. Also, courtesy of DeFi, crypto as a financial instrument is garnering users.

With the NFT market growing rapidly, we can always expect the user base to overlap with the crypto market. Institutions and governments adopting crypto are also on the rise. They also act as a credibility layer for the crypto market. So, it would be a brain fade if I were to overlook the mass adoption of crypto taking place as we speak. 

Education and acceptance will be the two drivers of the further mass adoption of crypto. Currently, a substantial portion of the crypto population is in the market because of the generated hype, intending to earn a quick buck or two. However, for the crypto market to mature, educated users and investors are required. 

Next, institutions, individuals and governments alike should be open to accepting crypto as a medium of exchange. This is when the potential of crypto can be truly realized. When education and acceptance of crypto grows, its infamous tag-along ‘volatility’ subsides and stability improves.”

David Chaum of XX Network

David is the founder of XX Network, a consumer-scale, quantum-ready online platform that allows users to communicate and exchange value without revealing so-called “metadata.”

“Mass adoption has absolutely started. Back in early November, I was at a Lakers game at what was until very recently the Staples Center, now the Crypto.com Center, here in Los Angeles. Crypto.com paid parent company AEG $700 million for those naming rights. So, not only could it afford it, it saw this as a sound business decision. Nothing implies a popular brand like having a sports arena named after it (unless you’re Comcast, in which case, well, that may not help.) Anyway, before the game started, I was buying some Bitcoin ETF on Nasdaq, where it is now traded, with my phone — while also trying to get the McDonald’s McRib NFTs, valued at only $20. So, even if they stop selling that legendary sandwich again in the U.S., I’d always have its image to gaze at. While I was waiting, I saw the new Tom Brady FTX commercial. Apparently, you can loathe Tom Brady and still want to trade on FTX. Does that mean FTX is more popular than Tom Brady? Seriously though, all this does signal that crypto is going mainstream.

What could help: a little privacy, please. In fact, more than a little.”

Ankitt Gaur of EasyFi Network

Ankitt is the CEO of EasyFi Network, a layer-two DeFi lending protocol for digital assets.

“This year was definitely a start for the mainstream entry of cryptocurrencies. If we look at the stats, the number of cryptocurrency users in 2020 was about 100 million, and in 2021, this number jumped to over 300 million. So, we can definitely vouch for the mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrencies. All trends also project that 2022 could be a really defining year for crypto. With thousands of innovative crypto projects coming into the picture and world governments taking note of digital assets, the number of crypto users could grow exponentially.”

Alex Tapscott of Ninepoint Digital Assets Group

Alex is a writer, speaker, investor and adviser focused on the impact of emerging technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies. He is the general manager of Ninepoint Digital Assets Group, an investment management services provider in the field of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency.  

“2021 was a milestone year for the mass adoption of crypto, as millions of people were drawn, for the first time, to the application layer built on top of blockchains. In the past, pure speculation has driven interest in various crypto assets and projects. Now, people are getting into crypto for other reasons. Maybe it’s for the cultural communities around NFTs or the new DeFi tools that are upending traditional financial services. Or perhaps they’re part of the hundreds of thousands of people playing play-to-earn videogames for the potential rewards they offer. I fully expect that the next billion people to join crypto will get involved because it’s fun, useful and engaging, not just because it’s a way to make money.”

Ahmed Al-Balaghi of Biconomy

Ahmed is a co-founder of Biconomy, a platform that empowers blockchain developers to enable a simplified transaction and onboarding experience for their Web3 project.

“In some ways, crypto has reached mass adoption as an investment vehicle. We are also seeing it continue to take a foothold within the gaming community, and this is where we believe it will see peak adoption in the coming year. In order to get there, and this goes for both gaming and non-gaming DApps, we believe that we need a multichain scalable ecosystem, an ecosystem where users are not deterred by exorbitantly high gas fees or complex UX for onboarding, rather having various ‘cheaper’ chains to choose from. 

To achieve this multichain, seamless Web 3.0, cross-chain smart contracts and in-game bridges will need to be implemented industrywide. This level of interoperability will allow people to interact from chain to chain, which has been one of the biggest friction points for user experience. The user will stay on a single DApp UI and be able to move funds between chains using these in-DApp bridges and interacting with smart contracts via various chains’ cross-chain contract calls.”

Introduction

The entry of major brands — from Nike and Adidas to McDonald’s and Burger King — into the blockchain industry through nonfungible tokens (NFTs) is indeed attracting a lot of people to use, or at least know of, decentralized technologies. And that’s how it starts: You hear about something, you go look for it to understand it, you see the benefits — and there you are, already involved in crypto. Simple as that.

But that’s just my opinion. To gain more insight on the matter, I reached out to different experts from the crypto and blockchain industry, asking them: “With 2021 coming to an end, in your opinion has crypto’s mass adoption already begun? What could help it reach the level of mass adoption it needs?”

Whales Abruptly Accumulate Over $346,000,000 Worth of Top-10 Altcoin in Just One Week, Says Analyst

From DeFi year to decade: Is mass adoption here? Experts Answer, Part 2

Decentralized technologies’ insiders shared their views on DeFi and on the role, achievements and challenges the space faced in 2021.

Yat Siu of Animoca Brands

Yat is the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, which delivers digital property rights to the world’s gamers and internet users, thereby creating a new asset class, play-to-earn economies and a more equitable digital framework contributing to the building of the open Metaverse.

“2021 was the year of NFTs, and in the second half of the year, we saw a growing emphasis on GameFi. This trend will continue well into 2022. Real mass adoption of DeFi will happen via GameFi, which will explode in growth during 2022 as the potential for mass financial inclusion becomes clearer to the mainstream. Financial awareness will also grow powerfully as games become more ‘financified.’”

These quotes have been edited and condensed.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Tim Draper of Draper Associates and Draper Fisher Jurvetson:

Tim is a pioneer of business ventures in the U.S. and a co-founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading investment firm in early-stage tech startups.

“I think the regulators are slowing progress here in the United States. DeFi already has major adoption outside the United States. Notice the new names for sports pavilions are FTX and Crypto.com… they both operate outside the United States.”

Sameep Singhania of QuickSwap

Sameep is the founder of QuickSwap, a decentralized exchange on Polygon that allows users to swap, earn, stack yields, lend, borrow and leverage, all on one decentralized, community-driven platform.

“My answer here will be similar to the last one. Absolutely — in 2020 and 2021, DeFi experienced mass growth. More and more people realized the importance of having their money work for them. Institutions and retail investors started staking their crypto to earn more of it, but as more people (and bots) started using various blockchain networks, those networks became congested, and gas fees (on some of them) went through the roof. These rising costs then made the barrier of entry too high for those who only have small amounts to work with.

Just like crypto itself, for DeFi to continue gaining adoption, big-name, trusted protocols need to launch on sidechains that offer low transaction costs, like Polygon. We already saw several behemoths like Aave and Compound come over in 2021, and they brought lots of liquidity and users with them. As more big players embrace interoperability and function on multiple chains, gas fees will decrease across the board, which will give more people the opportunity to adopt cryptocurrency and DeFi.”

Ray Youssef of Paxful

Ray is the CEO of Paxful, a global people-powered platform for buying, selling and trading digital currencies.

“Decentralized finance continues to be all about financial access and inclusion. As the sector expands, education will be crucial to fostering greater pathways to mass adoption and the transformation of the financial industry as we know it.”

Michael Kong of Fantom Foundation

Michael is the CEO of Fantom Foundation, a layer-one EVM-compatible platform that is fast, scalable and secure, built on a permissionless aBFT consensus protocol.

“We’ve continued to see mass adoption throughout 2021 despite the regulatory uncertainty. Developers are building more complex, efficient DeFi systems. As layer ones such as Fantom and Ethereum become more scalable, we will see even more growth in 2022, since one of the big limitations of all DApps and DeFi as a whole is the scalability of the blockchain. Furthermore, DeFi will gain more adoption as a result of becoming more well known and mainstream.”

Lisa Edwards of Getting Started In Crypto

Lisa is an Elliott Wave specialist trader with over 20 years of experience in traditional stocks and commodities, now exclusively trading cryptocurrency. She runs and co-owns Getting Started In Crypto, Thousand To Millions and The Moon Mag with Josh Taylor.

“Again this is starting to gain traction as people learn and understand they can invest/park their money and earn much greater interest than traditional banks and finance houses provide. On the plus side, many big investment firms did fully enter the crypto space, which has been incredible to see.”

John Wu of Ava Labs

John is the president of Ava Labs, which simplifies launching decentralized finance applications on Avalanche, the fastest smart contract platform in the blockchain industry.

“In 2020, we experienced the first real DeFi boom, and in 2021, the DeFi community proved it is here to stay and building for the future by embracing multiple chains. That said, we are still in the early stages of DeFi reaching the masses.

 Web2 users expect fast, responsive applications and a smooth user experience, and we’re just seeing the dawn of this phase of DeFi with third-generation blockchains like Avalanche. The amount of talent and capital accrued by the blockchain community surpasses any sector I’ve seen in over 20 years as a technology investor and venture capitalist, and users stand to benefit the most.

 From developers to business development to marketing to community, everyone in this space has the bold, entrepreneurial attitude required to make big, lasting changes with technology.”

Jane Thomason of Kasei Holdings

Jane is an entrepreneur and thought leader in technological innovation, fintech and blockchain for social impact. She is the chairperson of Kasei Holdings, an investment company specializing in the digital asset ecosystem.

“Mass adoption might be an overstatement, but we have seen tremendous growth. Chainanlysis reports that global crypto adoption has grown by over 2,300% since Q3 2019 and over 881% in the last year. In DeFi, we saw the largest and fastest uptake in middle-to-high-income countries — like the United States, China, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and nations in Western Europe — with DeFi being dominated by bigger investors and with transactions above $10 million accounting for over 60% of DeFi transactions in Q2 2021. I think three things will continue to drive DeFi growth: growth in institutional investors, emerging markets with small transactions but massive populations, and gaming, where DeFi is hot.”

Filipe Gonçalves of Ankr

Filipe is the DeFi architect at Ankr, a scalable protocol built to offer multichain infrastructure for plug-and-play DeFi solutions and multichain staking for DeFi. 

“The future will be multichain, and being able to switch between different networks seamlessly will play a huge role in adoption. Why? Because new DeFi users on Ethereum quickly realize that swaps are very expensive, especially for small trades. Wallets and platforms that can aggregate bridges and liquidity will make a real difference for DeFi investors, as it will enable them to pick which pools to invest in without the high fees, and it won’t matter which network they are on, be it Avalanche, Solana or Ethereum.”

Dean Tribble of Agoric

Dean is the co-founder and CEO of Agoric, an open-source development company launching interoperable JavaScript smart contracts.

“There were several moves late in the year to make DeFi visible outside of the crypto market. I do expect this to crack open the retail market in 2022. Especially, we know TradFi funds are finding ways to participate in DeFi. A key enabler for that will be regulated insurance for the correct execution of smart contracts. We expect that to start showing up in 2022.

More specifically, staking provided the primary rewards when proof-of-stake protocols first came out. But DeFi summer was driven by non-staking yield instruments. Since then, many teams have been integrating the two, so I expect various forms of staking to make a comeback with hybrid models in which staked assets can be used for leverage in other yield opportunities (e.g., liquid staking, ‘superfluid’ staking, etc.).

In terms of further regulation of the sector, I expect to see some DeFi-specific regulatory action next year. The big question is whether it adds useful clarity to help innovators get to market safely and quickly while protecting the public or whether it is greedy or poorly structured (like in the U.S. and elsewhere) such that it just drives innovation offshore. So far, the DeFi sector has successfully pushed back on a few poorly structured regulatory efforts. I’m hopeful that will continue while helping regulators address key areas usefully.”

Chris Kalani of Phantom Wallet

Chris is the chief product officer at Phantom Wallet, a Solana wallet built for DeFi and NFTs.

“We saw a decrease in DeFi usage this year, replaced by an increase in interest in NFTs. DeFi made sense for early adopters that were savvy and moving large amounts of money around, but I don’t think that this is what the masses are interested in at the moment.

It’s going to be other use cases like NFTs and gaming that are going to help drive adoption at scale.

You will see basic investing and people trying to earn some yield, but more of the advanced derivatives, yield farmers and trading are going to be fairly niche, just as it is in traditional fintech.”

Andrew Levine of Koinos Group

Andrew is the CEO of Koinos Group, an engineering-first company led by battle-hardened blockchain veterans with unrivaled experience as core developers and architects of the BitShares and Steem blockchains.

“I definitely think that we saw another order-of-magnitude increase in the size of the space, but that is a far cry from mass adoption. Mass adoption, for me, means that everyone and their mother is using blockchain-based applications in their day-to-day lives without ever even realizing it.”

Alex Shipp of Offshift

Alex is the chief strategy officer of Offshift, a decentralized application dedicated to privacy-centric storage and exchange.

“We certainly did not. We did, however, see a lot of very interesting and thought-provoking innovation and experimentation in the DeFi space. One of the biggest barriers holding back real adoption in the DeFi space is gas fees. Between off-chain scalability solutions and Ethereum 2.0, there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes. But we should be careful not to confuse CeFi adoption with DeFi adoption.”

Introduction

I’d like to highlight that the 2021 march toward decentralized finance (DeFi) mass adoption has made significant strides. Just look at the numbers: The total value locked in DeFi has grown from around $20 billion a year ago to above $230 billion at the time of writing. But the even better news is that it is still the beginning — people have just started to realize the benefits of decentralized technologies, the true potential of blockchain that changes the world.

To gain more insight on the matter, I reached out to different experts from the blockchain industry, asking: “After 2020 was named the year of DeFi, did we already see mass adoption of decentralized finance in 2021? What could help it gain even more adoption going into 2022?”

Whales Abruptly Accumulate Over $346,000,000 Worth of Top-10 Altcoin in Just One Week, Says Analyst

Crypto mainstream adoption: Is it here already? Experts Answer, Part 1

What does mass adoption mean for the blockchain industry? Has it started yet? If not, what could get it going?

Yat Siu of Animoca Brands

Yat is the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, which delivers digital property rights to the world’s gamers and internet users, thereby creating a new asset class, play-to-earn economies and a more equitable digital framework contributing to the building of the open Metaverse.

“Although we are still at a relatively early stage of the blockchain adoption curve, we are well on the way to reaching the early majority category sometime in 2022. This is being led by NFT gaming and the GameFi movement. As more game developers get involved and higher-quality game projects become available, mass adoption is inevitable.”

These quotes have been edited and condensed.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Simon Lapscher of Liquality

Simon is a co-founder of Liquality, a multi-chain browser extension wallet.

“Around 17% of the adult population own at least part of a Bitcoin. So, mass adoption is certainly underway, but barriers to entry like fiat on and off ramping, high fees, and ease of use still prevent us from getting to the broader population. To help bring crypto to the mainstream in 2022, crypto enthusiasts and product developers will need to continue iterating on the basics of onboarding and crypto usage to make it easy enough and fun enough for the mass adoption of crypto applications like DeFi and NFTs. Wallets will play a critically important role in making complex crypto applications into simplified operations via in-wallet integrations, as well as easy bridging between all layer ones and layer twos to simplify the experience of using crypto for users.”

Sameep Singhania of QuickSwap

Sameep is the founder of QuickSwap, a decentralized exchange on Polygon that allows users to swap, earn, stack yields, lend, borrow and leverage all on one decentralized, community-driven platform.  

“Just compare the overall market caps from the beginning of 2021 until today to illustrate how much crypto has grown this year. According to CoinMarketCap, on Jan. 1, crypto’s market cap was about $773 billion. Now it’s over $2.3 trillion. Despite the dollar’s rapid inflation, to me, annual growth of more than $1.5 trillion definitely suggests that mass adoption has begun, but there’s still a lot of room for crypto to continue to grow.

To enable that growth, more people need to learn about the alternatives to expensive layer-one chains, where gas fees can sometimes cost more than a transaction itself. That’s why I’ve always been a big supporter of Polygon, and it’s why I helped found QuickSwap. At Polygon, we aren’t competing with Ethereum or attempting to replace it, we’re helping Ethereum by providing a layer two where people can conduct transactions for far less than they cost on layer one. This service enables smaller investors to participate in DeFi with near-zero gas fees, while larger whales can continue to operate on layer one.”

Ray Youssef of Paxful

Ray is the CEO of Paxful, a global people-powered platform for buying, selling and trading digital currencies.

“The prospect of Bitcoin reaching mass adoption sooner than we think is massive. Mass adoption has started and Bitcoin is the future of finance. There are many key driving forces like gaming and sports that are contributing to its visibility. The expansion of Bitcoin as a means of exchange in the U.S. is gaining greater traction as we see mayors from New York City and Miami speaking very publicly about Bitcoin adoption while taking steps to integrate it within their own cities. Its implications are boundless.”

Mark Lurie of Shipyard Software

Mark is the CEO and co-founder of Shipyard Software, a decentralized exchange for retail crypto traders.

“There are two phases to mass adoption. Phase one is having crypto as part of one’s portfolio, typically through a centralized custodian like Coinbase. Over 16% of Americans and 43% of young male adults have used crypto. While there is still a long way to go, I think that qualifies as mass adoption. However, there is a second phase of mass adoption. Phase two involves holding one’s own crypto and interacting with Web3 applications, from games to DeFi. We are nowhere near phase two. The reason is primarily because it’s so technically complex to hold one’s own crypto. The reason it’s so technically complex is because there are regulatory barriers to simplifying the user experience — namely, custodying assets. We sit on the precipice of a swingback, where phase two of mass adoption could be stalled because of improper regulatory oversight or outright bans. The world and the established order are scared of what crypto, blockchain and decentralization can achieve. Don’t expect an orderly mass adoption like the touchscreen cellphone. When you can pay your taxes in crypto you yourself hold, I’ll call that mass adoption.”

Lisa Edwards of Getting Started In Crypto

Lisa is an Elliott Wave specialist trader with over 20 years of experience in traditional stocks and commodities, now exclusively trading cryptocurrency. She runs and co-owns Getting Started In Crypto, Thousand To Millions and The Moon Mag with Josh Taylor.

“Crypto adoption is very much in its beginning stage. It has a long way to go before the masses understand and are using crypto daily as they do cash. We need ease of use, so everyone from your grandma to a five-year-old can open up an app and use Bitcoin or any other crypto.”

Jonathan Schemoul of Aleph.im

Jonathan is the CEO at Aleph.im, an open-source, cross-blockchain decentralized storage and computing network. 

“With countries like El Salvador making Bitcoin legal tender and major companies like Facebook changing their name to Meta, it’s evident that crypto’s mass adoption has begun. NFTs and play-to-earn gaming have helped bring the mainstream masses into crypto by offering a more fun and interactive way to engage in the space. These could also be key to helping crypto reach the level of mass adoption it needs.”

Denelle Dixon of Stellar Development Foundation

Denelle is the CEO and executive director of Stellar Development Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar.

“In a word: interoperability. I talk about this all the time. For all of its inefficiencies and gaps, the traditional financial system is not going away any time soon, and neither is cash — but this is what most people know best. Part of blockchain’s value is in how it connects traditional and digital banking rails. More interoperability means more opportunities to bring people in, introduce them to the value that blockchain-powered services provide, and grow adoption beyond the crypto-converted.”

David Shuttleworth of ConsenSys

David is the DeFi economist at ConsenSys, a global community of developers, businesspeople, programmers, journalists, lawyers and others made to create and promote blockchain infrastructure and peer-to-peer applications.

“2021 has been a year of many defining moments in blockchain: from critical performance upgrades, the Ethereum EIP-1559 fork and the growth of competing layer-one chains such as Solana to a surge in institutional investment from the likes of BlackRock, Citibank and Visa to Bitcoin becoming legal tender in El Salvador. Yet, crypto is still much further from mass adoption than these milestones might suggest. Part of the reason stems from a widespread lack of easily accessible, user-friendly interfaces. To the crypto-naive, the ecosystem is largely inaccessible beyond basic interactions like trading on centralized exchanges (which unsurprisingly make UI and UX part of their core business). Going deeper and navigating across chains and between DApps can become unnecessarily complicated, even for crypto natives. Decentralized finance, for instance, presents the opportunity to democratize financial services and facilitates more equitable outcomes than traditional finance. However, harnessing its utility through basic functions like collateralized loans or high-interest savings accounts often requires interfacing with many different protocols and bridging digital assets back-and-forth. If the future is truly one of mass adoption, it will involve a seamless experience in which users can quickly and easily navigate through these processes, ideally without even knowing which chain or layer they’re operating on.”

Anton Bukov of 1inch Network

Anton is a co-founder of 1inch Network, a distributed network of decentralized protocols.

“Mass adoption requires accessibility for the masses, but the Ethereum mainnet is not suitable for that right now because of enormously high gas fees. As we can see, a lot of users already switched to sidechains like BSC, Polygon, Avalanche, Solana and others to avoid those fees. Unfortunately, Ethereum Optimistic Rollup layer-two solutions like Optimism and Arbitrum are still in their early alpha or beta stages of development, while Ethereum zk-rollup layer-two solutions like zkSync and zkPorter are not even released yet. Looking forward to all the new blockchain tech launches in 2022!”

Alexander Mitrovich of Unique Network

Alexander is the CEO and co-founder of Unique Network, a scalable blockchain for composable NFTs with advanced economies — The NFT chain built for Polkadot and Kusama.

“From a true definition of ‘mass adoption’ — meaning critical mass — no, we have not scratched the surface of mass adoption of crypto. When a majority of global consumers are using cryptocurrency or owning NFTs and participating in DAOs without knowing that they are using blockchain-based technologies — that will be when mass adoption has been reached. I think the spark has been lit, but it’s going to require deeper integration, accessible tools that are easy to use by normal people, and extreme flexibility in technical and economic design or perhaps a subversion of the current technological paradigm before we can say crypto has achieved mass adoption.”

Alan Konevsky of PrimeBlock

Alan is the chief legal officer at PrimeBlock, a sustainable Bitcoin mining operation, infrastructure solutions provider and member of the Bitcoin Mining Council, with locations spread across North America.

“The question should be: Mass adoption for what purpose? Mass adoption as a speculative asset like stocks and bonds? Mass adoption as some kind of a payment medium? Mass adoption as some kind of a store of value?  You need to think carefully about what the use case at hand is because certainly when we think of crypto as currency, meaning as payment instruments, there is still a lot of work to do. 

When you think of crypto as an investable asset or, depending on the macro environment, as an inflation edge, there has been a lot of progress. Bitcoin will never have mass adoption as a payment medium and won’t be able to scale globally for this purpose. However, Bitcoin is gaining more adoption as a speculative asset, and for some, as a store of value among institutional and retail investors, including in the form of ETFs and pension plans.”

Introduction

What would it take for you to consider crypto mainstream? For me personally, one of the main indicators for adoption rate is the percentage of people involved and interested in the space. The world now belongs to the millennials — the Y and Z generations of whom we thought as kids not so long ago — they are the economic driver if not now, then in the near future. A massive 83% of polled millennial millionaires revealed in a recent survey that they had made crypto investments. It seems like the decentralization process can no longer be halted, meaning that mass adoption is inevitable — and it is happening now.

But that’s just my opinion. To gain more insight on the matter, I reached out to different experts from the crypto and blockchain industry, asking them: “With 2021 coming to an end, in your opinion, has crypto’s mass adoption already begun? What could help it reach the level of mass adoption it needs?”

Whales Abruptly Accumulate Over $346,000,000 Worth of Top-10 Altcoin in Just One Week, Says Analyst

From DeFi year to decade: Is mass adoption here? Experts Answer, Part 1

Decentralized technologies’ insiders shared their views on DeFi and on the role, achievements and challenges the space faced in 2021.

Yaniv Tal of The Graph

Yaniv is a co-founder and CEO at Edge & Node, and co-founder of The Graph, a decentralized indexing protocol used by blockchains such as Ethereum.

“Many people and institutions got started with DeFi in 2021, but we haven’t even started mass adoption yet. As more and more retail and payment systems start integrating with crypto, people will be able to keep their money in crypto, bypassing the traditional banking system, and benefit from high interest rates made possible by the productive use of protocol tokens.”

These quotes have been edited and condensed.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Simon Peters of eToro

Simon is a crypto analyst at eToro, the world’s leading social trading platform, which offers both investing in stocks and cryptocurrencies.

“The rise of NFTs has underpinned the recent mainstream adoption of DeFi, with some of the world’s most popular NFT marketplaces (OpenSea and Rarible) running their operations on the Ethereum blockchain.

As one of the most promising sectors within the crypto market, decentralized DeFi knows no boundaries. DeFi blockchain networks are turning the tide on traditional wealth management with more and more financial institutions adopting this innovative technology. In April 2021, the European Investment Bank released a bond of 100 million euros on the Ethereum blockchain, demonstrating its intention for further innovation in traditional finance.

With more and more users becoming involved in DeFi through borrowing, lending, yield farming and trading on decentralized exchanges, underlying blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana will continue to see significant growth, and as a result, transpire in the appreciation of their native coins.”

Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com

Roger is an early Bitcoin adopter and investor. He is the executive chairman of Bitcoin.com, a site featuring cryptocurrency news in addition to an exchange and wallet service. He is also one of the five original founders of the Bitcoin Foundation.

“Most of the world has never used a DeFi product. It is up to the entrepreneurs and businesses to build the software tools that make DeFi easy, safe and useful enough for more people to want to get involved.”

Pat Arunanondchai of EvryNet

Pat is the project lead at EvryNet, a platform for cross-chain asset transfer, and bridging digital tokens between Evrynet and other blockchains.

“Token management and education about the space are issues that prevent more adoption of DeFi among the masses, as well as institutional investors. Beyond the volatility, many just see crypto as a form of payment and nothing else yet. People think that because you can’t pay for things with it, then it has no economic utility. In general, we need a better understanding of DeFi.”

Martha Reyes of Bequant

Martha is the head of research at Bequant, the digital asset exchange and prime broker.

“DeFi adoption has really kicked off in 2021, with TVL rising exponentially versus 2020. However, the number of users is still relatively small because the user experience is not easy. As an industry, crypto has very much been led by retail investors, with institutions following suit. For DeFi, institutions have gotten onboard a lot earlier in the journey and are influencing adoption much more quickly than in wider crypto. High gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain also make it less accessible for retail users. I expect the pace to pick up in 2022 as more and more banks, exchanges and financial institutions realize the benefits of decentralized finance and the entry points become more user-friendly.”

Joshua Tobkin of SupraOracles

Joshua is the CEO and co-founder of SupraOracles, which develops a blockchain network that uses real-time data on the financial markets for a secure interface and DeFi smart contracts.

“We are working to address the oracle dilemma that has led to more than $730 million being stolen from DeFi users since DeFi Summer. With advancements in this area, in particular around security and speed, I believe market confidence will improve. Ultimately, better tooling, better on-ramps and better awareness will also help. Not to mention, inflation is definitely going to be a real driver for more adoption too.”

Jason Allegrante of Fireblocks

Jason is the head regulatory counsel and global chief compliance officer at Fireblocks, a digital asset custody, transfer and settlement platform.

“Solving security, usability and compliance challenges will help bring more institutions into the market. The launch of permissioned DeFi will address these areas and create a more seamless onboarding experience for traditional fintechs and banks to enter into the arena. 

These trends will converge as institutions and are pushed to scale to meet the demands from the retail market, which will see rocket-fueled growth from gaming.”

Hatu Sheikh of DAO Maker

Hatu is the co-founder and chief security officer of DAO Maker, which creates growth technologies and funding frameworks for startups, while simultaneously reducing risks for investors.

“Absolutely — 2020 and 2021 were the breakthrough years for all things DeFi. However, the room for growth and expansion is larger than the current landscape. The majority of the population is yet to grasp DeFi, its products and its utility. I believe DeFi is still in its novelty phase, with trends dominating the adoption rather than real-life uses.

However, the activity volume on DeFi protocols and a growing TVL are concrete indicators of people increasingly using DeFi products. The lending and borrowing market on DeFi has gained prominence with its transparency and ease of access, luring traditional and retail users into the DeFi space.

The further adoption of DeFi is dependent on how seamlessly it is integrated with conventional financial services. Apart from the fact that this integration will help DeFi reach the grassroots levels, it also is a gamechanger for how the financial systems work. The transparency of DeFi, coupled with the user-friendliness of conventional platforms, is a combination I’m looking forward to.”

Dominik Schiener of the Iota Foundation

Dominik is the co-founder and chairman of the Iota Foundation, an open-source distributed ledger and cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of Things.

“The biggest difference between crypto in 2017 and crypto in 2022 is the establishment of tangible business models and use cases within our ecosystem thanks to DeFi. We no longer have to wait for external parties such as large companies to drive adoption. We can do it ourselves with applications that introduce much-needed innovation to the base level of our economy — finance.

2021 has been a tremendous year for early-stage validation and growing excitement toward DeFi’s potential. But it’s still early stages. DeFi isn’t yet comparable to fintech companies like Revolut or N26 (2 million to 5 million monthly active users) or established Web2 finance players like PayPal (361 million active users). It’s anyone’s game, since no DApp in the crypto space has achieved mass adoption.

Going into 2022 and equipped with the right layer-one networks, we’re aiming for mass adoption. To achieve that, we need to eradicate the entry barriers for buying and selling crypto through regulated fiat bridges (such as banks), overhaul the user experience, reduce fees (anything above $0.1 is not acceptable), and provide the right guide rails so everyone can easily and safely participate in the decentralized economy (such as custody solutions, decentralized identity and secure wallets).

DeFi is legitimizing crypto and decentralized economies. Traditional financial institutions are already starting to participate. In 2022, we will only see an uptick in usage and adoption.

The beauty of permissionless innovation is that we are able to rapidly evolve as an ecosystem to find the best possible solutions. DeFi is the rapid innovation playground we needed to finally upgrade the finance sector with technologies that will empower everyone to participate in the global economy.”

Daniel Khoo of Nansen

Daniel is a research analyst at Nansen’s platform, which combines on-chain data with a proprietary database of activity across more than 100 M blockchain wallets to provide real-time, actionable insights for investors and financial institutions in the expanding blockchain ecosystem.

“DeFi TVL growth:

  • 2020 — from $630.26 million to $19.82 billion (approximately 3,033%)
  • 2021 — from $19.82 billion to $241.79 billion (approximately 1,120%)
  • A large increase in TVL despite a slowdown in growth as compared to 2020

However, DeFi TVL is now more sticky. DeFi TVL held arguably better than spot, showing its resilience.

In my view, one factor would be the maturity of stablecoins. Multiple big names such as USDC, USDT, BUSD and UST play a vital role as to why TVL held up. As compared to previous cycles, when stablecoins weren’t as matured, people would liquidate their crypto positions to fiat in the event of market uncertainty or stressful conditions. However, now people can sell to stables (or, rotate to stables) and also use them to farm yield on-chain. It is also a very common strategy to farm stables on various DApps that have been battle-tested like Curve. The ability to earn a good yield, risk-adjusted, causes capital to be more sticky and thus TVL to be more resilient. This is often compared to parking capital in 0% interest rate savings accounts or even bonds. From the picture in Nansen’s stablecoin master, we can see that market caps of stablecoins have been growing steadily with the increased demand.”

Ankitt Gaur of EasyFi Network

Ankitt is the CEO of EasyFi Network, a layer-two DeFi lending protocol for digital assets.

“Yes! After the DeFi boom of 2020, we’ve seen a significant rise in the number of DeFi users. But for mass adoption to truly unfold, the user experience in DeFi and onboarding process should be simplified. We need projects to be able to blur the lines between TradFi and DeFi, facilitating a seamless transition. Solving the scalability issues and reducing the costs associated with cryptocurrencies could also propel the industry toward mass adoption.

 Moreover, I believe that interoperability could also be a game-changer in DeFi. Interoperability could just improve the overall user experience in DeFi, providing a way for users to easily transact between chains and choose the one that suits them most. This is why we’ve placed a special emphasis on interoperability with EasyFi. As a layer-two lending protocol, EasyFi has multichain accessibility and bridges the various gaps in DeFi.”

Alex Tapscott of Blockchain Research Institute

Alex is a writer, speaker, investor and advisor focused on the impact of emerging technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies. He is a co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, a multi-million-dollar think-tank that is investigating blockchain strategies, opportunities and use-cases. 

“The 2020s will be the DeFi decade. Why? DeFi extends Satoshi’s concept of peer-to-peer electronic cash to lending, trading, investing, managing risk and more, all of which are built on top of distributed networks, not corporations. In one year, the DeFi industry’s market capitalization has ballooned 30 times to $150 billion. The total value of user deposits, or total value locked, has surged 100 times to nearly $200 billion. DeFi is maybe the fastest-growing industry ever, but despite its meteoric growth, it’s still very small. According to DeFi Llama and DeFi Pulse, there are perhaps a couple million people using DeFi across various platforms like Ethereum, Solana and Cosmos. The next decade will see a billion people, many of them unbanked, get onboarded to financial markets for the first time ever via DeFi applications. In the same way billions leapfrogged landlines and went straight to cell phones, so too will billions leapfrog traditional banks and go straight to DeFi.”

Ahmed Al-Balaghi of Biconomy

Ahmed is a co-founder of Biconomy, a developer platform that empowers blockchain developers to enable a simplified transaction and onboarding experience for their Web3 projects.

“More scaling solutions will become essential to the mass adoption of DeFi products and services. We are seeing that most DeFi applications go live on multiple chains. While that makes them cheaper to use, it adds more complexities for those who are trying to learn and understand how they work. Thus, to start the second phase of DeFi mass adoption, we need solutions that simplify onboarding and use DApps that are spread across different chains and scaling solutions. The endgame is that all the cross-chain actions will be in the background, handled by infra services such as Biconomy or the DApp themselves, so the user doesn’t need to deal with it themselves.”

Introduction

When I was preparing a similar article about decentralized finance last year, I knew why it was a “DeFi year” for me: The most popular question I heard then was, “Could you tell me what DeFi is?” A lot has changed since then. All my friends — and they are far from the blockchain space — now ask: “Have you heard what this DeFi project is doing?” or, “Between that and another project, which one solves this problem better?” And so on. The public discourse now stands on a higher level of understanding of this industry. People outside of crypto are doing research —  they read, explore and ask profound questions. Isn’t this the mainstream adoption we all have been hoping for? It is for me. 

To gain more insight on the matter, I reached out to different experts from the blockchain industry, asking: “After 2020 was named the year of DeFi, did we already see mass adoption of decentralized finance in 2021? What could help it gain even more adoption going into 2022?”

Whales Abruptly Accumulate Over $346,000,000 Worth of Top-10 Altcoin in Just One Week, Says Analyst

Ho-ho-hodl: Crypto-themed gifts that have you covered during the Holidays

With Christmas approaching fast, we’ve listed out some of the best crypto-inspired offerings that you can gift your loved ones.

Tis’ the season of giving and with Christmas right around the corner, it’s time to get the holiday shopping out of the way. With the digital asset market having matured as much as it has, there are now crypto enthusiasts in virtually every family and friend circle across the globe. In this festive piece, we’ve listed out some of the best crypto-themed gifts you can get for those who love everything about this fast-evolving space. 

From quality clothing and books to gift cards and everything else in between, when sourcing the perfect crypto-centric gift, it is best to probably think outside the box because that’s pretty much what might have gotten any cryptocurrency enthusiast into this market in the first place. So, without any further ado, let's jump straight in.

The annual Bitcoin Miami Conference is widely considered to be one of the biggest draws for crypto investors — both big and small — in the world today, and rightly so. The event has traditionally drawn some of the biggest movers and shakers within this space, with the upcoming conference scheduled to take place from April 6–9 at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

The 2022 iteration is scheduled to host keynote speeches from prominent crypto personnel including Jack Mallers, founder and CEO of Strike — the world's leading digital wallet built on Bitcoin's Lightning Network — El-Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor, Blockstream CEO Adam Back, former United States presidential nominee and entrepreneur Andrew Yang and others. 

Tickets to the Bitcoin Miami conference are available from as low as $99 — i.e. festival day passes — to as high as $13,999 referred to as a “whale pass” which includes VIP access to every aspect of the event, including backstage meetings and one on one interactions with speakers.

Another option worth considering is the North American Bitcoin Conference that is slated to take place between January 17–19, 2022. The event will host personalities such as billionaire Mark Cuban and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, among others. Tickets are available from $199–$899.

One of the best gifts a person could get someone actively investing in the digital asset space is a book that provides an in-depth yet balanced outlook on crypto trading. The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains by Antony Lewis is one such option. It provides readers with a thorough discourse of the workings of the cryptocurrency market and the technology underlying it. 

Camila Russo’s The Infinite Machine is another option worth looking into since it charts the rise of the global blockchain ecosystem from its early days, citing interviews from a number of key personnel who have been associated with this space since its very inception. The book has been formulated in the form of an easy-to-digest literary tale, making it easily accessible.

A must-have for anyone actively investing in the digital asset market, if you know anyone who has a passion for crypto but is still storing their holdings on an exchange or hot wallet, a hardware wallet would make an excellent gift. While being highly affordable, these cold storage devices come replete with well-developed ecosystems that can allow users to dabble in the world of crypto trading, decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and more.

In terms of their pricing, the Ledger Nano S is available for a base sum of just $59, while the Trezor One is currently retailing for a similar price point of around $63. Additionally, both companies also offer more expensive variants — i.e. the Ledger Nano S and the Trezor Model T — that come loaded with additional features such as Bluetooth connectivity, OLED display panels, support for hundreds of coins and many others.

No Christmas celebration can ever be truly complete without the exchange of a festive-themed article of clothing such as a sweater, pullover or hoodies. In this regard, there are now many options that one can choose from when deciding to gift their loved ones some crypto-inspired apparel from hoodies featuring Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) logos, to sweaters and pullovers featuring phrases like “HODL,” “FOMO” and “BTFD,” there are literally hundreds of options that one can pick from today.

People looking to gift light-hearted items this holiday season may want to consider the highly popular Doge-themed moon lamp that has recently caught the attention of crypto lovers across the globe. 

The offering comes replete with a massive image of the famous Doge meme — that has been 3D-printed onto the lamp’s outer surface — while featuring a USB-chargeable battery pack offering a decent running life. Not only that, there are also a number of color and dimming options that users can choose from. However, the most standout feature of this lamp is that it can be paid for in Dogecoin (DOGE), making it a truly unique gift option.

Other items in a somewhat similar vein include crypto-themed pillows featuring logos of prominent digital currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or even Cardano (ADA). In addition to being soft and comfortable, these items can serve as perfect home decorations for any crypto enthusiast. 

One of the most famous, but well-loved, crypto-themed presents that people have been handing out over the holiday season over the last couple of years have been gift cards. These allow users to spend various digital currencies in lieu of highly sought-after items available across a host of major retail outlets. 

Bitrefill’s Balance Card is an excellent example of this, allowing their owners to spend the loaded currencies via platforms such as Amazon.com, the Google and Apple Play Stores, Nike, Sony and hundreds of other options with the click of a button. The gift cards can be topped up with amounts ranging from as low as $50 to upwards of $1,000 worth of crypto.

Similarly, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is now offering interested customers a wide array of holiday-themed digital gift cards, allowing them to spread the holiday love by giving people the chance to send and receive crypto gifts with ease. Existing users of the platform have the option to receive any of the exchange’s listed coins and tokens, which can later be spent in return for many different items.

Happy holidays everyone

Despite the market acting up in recent weeks — as is best reflected by the total market cap of the sector dipping from $3 trillion to under $2.3 trillion over the last month or so — it is worth saying that now is the time for crypto investors and enthusiasts to take a step back and reflect on what truly matters in their lives other than their finances, for this is the one part of the year where we can spend time with the ones we truly cherish and love. Here’s wishing y’all happy holidays from Cointelegraph.

Whales Abruptly Accumulate Over $346,000,000 Worth of Top-10 Altcoin in Just One Week, Says Analyst