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Bitcoin

On the brighter side, DeFi will continue to expand and adapt, with DAO governance eventually becoming a major driver of activity.

Another major player in the cryptocurrency world is forecasting a dismal year for Bitcoin (BTC) in 2022. Following the United States Federal Reserve’s and other central banks’ tightening of liquidity measures, Huobi Research believes that BTC will enter a bear market. On the brighter side, decentralized finance (DeFi) will continue to expand and adapt, with decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance eventually becoming a major driver of activity on the chain.

Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) prices plummeted on Thursday night on the cryptocurrency market, shedding about $150 billion from the market. Over the last 24 hours, Bitcoin has lost roughly 7.9% of its value to go as low as $38,788 at the time of writing.

2021 was a watershed year for crypto, with industry growth reaching new heights. DeFi, nonfungible tokens, cryptocurrency adoption, blockchain usage and other factions all had big years. Blockchain technology has also been brought to the forefront via Web3 and the metaverse. Regulators are also catching up, with 40 nations having established over 150 distinct rules for cryptocurrency according to the “Global Crypto Industry Overview and Trends” report published by Huobi Research in collaboration with Blockchain Association Singapore.

While several of these industries will continue to develop this year, it may be a challenging year for BTC. According to ’s analysis, the U.S. Fed has started to taper, which indicates that dollar liquidity is losing its return.

In 2013, the Fed took a similar step, which was followed by a two-year bear market. While the market has changed dramatically and there is far more liquidity and BTC holders, Huobi believes another such move could be on the cards.

Despite the gloomy forecast for BTC, Huobi believes that the wider industry will see significant development in other sectors. DeFi is one of these, a market that rose from $19 billion in January 2021 to a high of $250 billion in total value locked at year’s end. We’ll witness DeFi 2.0 enter the scene in 2022, as per the Huobi report.

According to Huobi, DAOs will also become a powerful on-chain governance mechanism. The report highlights that the demand for DAO governance and the funds DAOs manage will increase in the future. The management of DAO funds may link with various DeFi applications, allowing treasury management.

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Bitcoin cycle is far from over and miners are in it for the long haul: Fidelity report

January 13, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Industry

In a jampacked report on digital assets, Fidelity asset management theorizes that miner movements indicate the Bitcoin cycle has a lot more room to run.

Fidelity Digital Assets — the crypto wing of Fidelity Investments which has $4.2 trillion assets under management–shared their “two sats” on the future of the digital assets space. The key takeaways touched upon miners’ behavior and Bitcoin (BTC) network adoption.

In the annual report released last week, the group shared some insights into the world of BTC mining:

“As Bitcoin miners have the most financial incentive tho make the best guess as to the adoption and value of BTC (...) the current bitcoin cycle is far from over and these miners are making investments for the long haul.”

The report stated that the recovery in the hash rate in 2021 “was truly astounding”, particularly when faced the world’s second-largest economy China banning Bitcoin in 2021. The rebound in hash rate since the ban thanks to BTC’s hash power being “more widely distributed around the world,” showed miners are set on long-term profits.

The statements aligned with miners’ recent selling performance. Key on-chain metric indicate Bitcoin miners are in “massive” BTC accumulation mode, as miners show no desire to sell.

When it came to orange-pilling entire countries, Fidelity made some interesting predictions into more nation-states accepting BTC as legal tender:

“There is very high-stakes game theory at play here, whereby if bitcoin adoption increases, the countries that secure some bitcoin today will be better off competitively than their peers. We, therefore, wouldn't be surprised to see other sovereign nation-states acquire bitcoin in 2022 and perhaps even see a central bank make an acquisition.”

Their comments come as Tonga’s former MP suggested the country could adopt BTC in late 2022.

In essence, more regulation and better products will open up the crypto space, “bringing a greater portion of the hundreds of trillions in traditional assets into the digital asset ecosystem.” Combined with miners' hodling, it could lengthen the cycle and drive BTC to new highs.

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