The cryptocurrency and blockchain industries experienced explosive growth in 2021, especially in the areas of decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFT).

The characteristics of this year also include continued price fluctuations, inexplicable behavior from China, large-scale experiments in Central America, escalating institutional interest, and the rise of some faster smart contract networks – all of which are reflected in this year’s In the list of industry “winners”. And losers. “

2021 winners

Kazakhstan

When China effectively banned Bitcoin (Bitcoin) During the mining operations in May 2021, Kazakhstan is eager to fill the vacuum and sell its cheap and sufficient coal supply to displaced miners and others.Many have operations in Central Asian countries, including the top five Encrypted mining pool Operated by Bit Mining.

As of July 2021, Kazakhstan’s average monthly computing power share is 18.1%—that is, it accounts for nearly one-fifth of the world’s Bitcoin mining output, second only to the United States (42.7%), and from An amazing increase of 1.4% In September 2019, according to To the Cambridge Alternative Finance Center.

In light of reports that as winter approaches, it remains to be seen whether Kazakhstan will maintain its share of global BTC mining in 2022.

Coin Bank

Coinbase Global, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, became the first cryptocurrency company to be listed on the U.S. stock exchange. Listed on NASDAQ on April 14. The closing price of the day was 328.28 US dollars and the market value was 86 billion US dollars. This was an amazing release that made people compare with the initial public offerings of Facebook and Airbnb. However, its stock price rebounded at the end of the year, and it was US$243.35 on December 18, and its market value was still US$52.37 billion.

The listing of Coinbase is widely regarded as another sign that cryptocurrency has become mainstream, and there will be more public offerings in the future. “Coinbase will be the torchbearer of the entire blockchain community in the public market,” Kavita Gupta, founding managing partner of Delta Growth Fund, told Cointelegraph.

Solana

In 2021, a new network supporting smart contracts emerged. The largest and fastest growing one is Solana, which is an ultra-fast proof-of-stake network that claims to process 50,000 transactions per second (TPS). In contrast, Ethereum’s TPS is about 30.

“In 2021, no project-perhaps in the history of encryption-has become hotter and faster than Solana,” wrote Ryan Serkis of Messari. The open source blockchain is hosting more and more NFT and DeFi projects, although it will suffer multiple distributed denial of service attacks before 2021.Sol) As of December 20, the local cryptocurrency easily ranked fifth among all tokens. Cointelegraph Markets Pro, Trailing only BTC, Ether (Ethereum), Binance Coin (Bitcoin) And tether (USDT).

Nayib Bukele / El Salvador

El Salvador made history in 2021-became the first country to announce Bitcoin (Bitcoin) legal tender. The country’s energetic President Nayib Bukele has fascinated the cryptocurrency world: using volcanic energy to power the country’s BTC mining business and airdrop 30 to every adult in the country U.S. dollar BTC, and announced the launch of Bitcoin City in late November, a fully functional city built around Bitcoin, initially funded by a $1 billion Bitcoin bond.

Only time will tell whether all this means an obvious economic “victory” for the people of El Salvador, but Booker can say, Buy on dips, Brought some 21st century innovation and brilliance to the poor Central American land whose economy is heavily dependent on remittances, that is, money sent home by foreign workers.

Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple

When Christie’s auctioned a digital collage in February—it was the first major auction house to offer purely digital works with a unique NFT—it didn’t even include a price. No one knows how to evaluate it. Mike Winkelmann (aka Beeple)’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” sold for $69.3 million, and the art industry may never be the same.

related: NFT “Art Revolution”: Beeple in his 5,040 days of love labor, Cointelegraph Magazine

Put this in context: this work sold more at auction than the works of George Seurat, Paul Gauguin, or Salvador Dali, and pushed the relatively unknown Beetle to the highest paid in the world Accompanied by contemporary artists, such as David Hockney and Jeff Koons. It also sends a notice to people outside the crypto world that irreplaceable tokens will be a force that cannot be ignored. NFT sales have soared in 2021, and in late November, “NFT” became Announcing “Vocabulary of the Year” Provided by dictionary publisher Collins.

avalanche

Avalanche is another fast smart contract network, entering the top 10 in 2021. “Solana and Avalanche are the new stars in the DeFi multi-chain”, Announce CoinGecko’s total value lock (TVL) in the third quarter was 6% and 2%, respectively. (Avalanche hosts the Aave DeFi protocol.) These TVL proceeds are at the expense of Ethereum, which held almost all DeFi TVL (99%) at the beginning of the year. In contrast, its share at the end of the third quarter was 76%.

Avalanche’s national currency, AVAXThe market value in late December was 27.3 billion U.S. dollars, ranking 10th, which can be said to be due to its deal with Deloitte to support the consulting firm’s cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Sam Bankman-Fried / FTX

In 2021, Sam Bankman-Fried was declared “The richest person in cryptocurrency“Mainly because of his ownership shares in FTX, which is the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange he founded in 2019.

By the end of 2021, FTX has become the second largest crypto derivatives exchange, according to To CoinGecko, only behind Binance (futures). Messari called FTX “the fastest growing company ever” and pointed out that Bankman-Fried used less than 100 employees to build a $25 billion company in less than three years.

FTX Completed $900 million in financing In July, the exchange was valued at US$18 billion, higher than the previous US$1.2 billion. Participants included SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin, VanEck, and the Paul Tudor Jones family. In June, FTX won the long-term naming rights for the series Miami Heat’s NBA Basketball court.

Outside sea

The NFT phenomenon is a boon for digital artists. They can sell their works without agents and physical art galleries, but they still need a digital market. OpenSea is a pioneer and market leader in the field of NFT art, becoming one of the biggest winners this year.

OpenSea charges a relatively modest 2.5% commission for each sale on its platform, but this generated $79 million in revenue in August (the peak month of 2021). According to Cointelegraph consultation. As of part of November, year-to-date revenue exceeded $235 million. By December, the situation hadn’t changed much: “The world’s dominant NFT market is looting cash,” Say Mesari.

ProShares ETF

In mid-October, with the launch of the first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, various obstacles were overcome. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange and became the second-largest open day fund in record trading volume. Some people call it “a watershed moment in the crypto industry.”

Its launch ended eight years of futile work by U.S. fund issuers – the Winkelvoss ETF was the first to be rejected by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2013 – but there are still some people who say that breakthrough funds are futures-based ETFs. Not to track the price of Bitcoin (Bitcoin) directly. The SEC clearly prefers to have two layers of regulatory protection-namely Both The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the US Securities and Exchange Commission-A few weeks later, the US Securities and Exchange Commission rejected VanEck’s spot market ETF application, further confirming this.

Losers in 2021

China

As recently as September 2020, China controlled two-thirds (67%) of the world’s cryptocurrency mining production, but in May, it banned mining operations for reasons that no one knew, but this may be related to protecting the country’s central bank. The need is related to digital currency (CBDC), and it seems to be close to a full launch.

In any case, Bitcoin’s hash rate immediately dropped by 50%, which had some impact on the market. However, other countries quickly filled the vacancy in the mining industry, including the United States, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Canada. In retrospect, many people think that China’s actions are gifts to the West. “today [Bitcoin] The network is more decentralized than ever, and prices have increased by 50%.” Say Analyst Willy Woo.

Yuan (Diem)

Facebook’s Libra stablecoin joint venture (now Diem) announced a blue-chip list of partners with great fanfare in 2019, but the project has been delayed and the scope has shrunk. Today, people don’t know much about Diem, except in terms of resignation-for example, Dante Disparte went to Circle, and recently, the head of cryptocurrency activities David Marcus stated that he will leave the company before the end of the year.

Facebook, renamed Meta, has been criticized by US lawmakers for its general “influence” on social media. Its stablecoin project was originally scheduled to debut in early 2021, but it may suffer collateral damage. There is not much clarity under any circumstances. As in the New York Times Comment, “The Libra cryptocurrency was eventually renamed Diem, and the company’s efforts in crypto wallets were called Novi. The confusion of names is often confusing, even for company insiders.”

Central Bank of Nigeria

In February, the Central Bank of Nigeria ordered all local banks to close customer accounts using cryptocurrencies. The president of CBN stated that most encrypted accounts are used to fund “illegal” activities such as money laundering and financing of terrorism.

Nigeria is expected to soon launch a central bank digital currency like China, so maybe CBN is following China’s playbook to eliminate all competing crypto businesses when its CBDC is expected to launch. If so, its efforts will fail miserably.

Not only did encryption survive, but by August, Nigeria had the world’s Second largest market Used for peer-to-peer bitcoin transactions.

Virgil Greaves

Once upon a time, Virgil Griffith was a Arouse celebrities In the crypto world.The former Ethereum developer and U.S. citizen traveled to North Korea in early 2019 Attend a cryptocurrency conferenceIn November of the same year, he was arrested in Los Angeles for violating US sanctions laws.

“I don’t think Virgil’s actions provided any real help to DRPK in doing bad things. He gave a speech based on public information about open source software,” Announce At that time, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

In September 2021, just before the start of his criminal trial, Griffith “admitted to conspiracy to violate U.S. law and went to North Korea to give a speech on how to use blockchain technology to launder money and evade sanctions,” The Wall Street Journal Report. he can Face up to six and a half years in prison As part of the plea agreement. It is unclear what caused him to change his request.

Iron Finance (TITAN)

Maybe it’s not a good idea to collateralize a stablecoin (such as IRON) with another stablecoin in the U.S. dollar (USDC) and A humble governance token (TITAN).In this case, the result is Be described as “The world’s first large-scale crypto bank run”-especially the run on the Iron Finance agreement. The result: TITAN plummeted from a price of more than $60 to a few thousandths in a few hours in late June.

CipherTrace later stated that the incident was caused by a design flaw: “Iron. Finance lacks a proper stabilization mechanism.” But at the same time, some investors were burned, including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who Call Supervision to determine “what is a stablecoin and acceptable collateral”. Iron Finance (ICE) traded at approximately $0.002 on December 20.