Play-to-earn games are seeing drastic improvements with the release of three new titles by Nakamoto Games. The developer already released the immersive NAKA Galactic, a space-themed action game, and Naka Blaster, its first multiplayer interactive shooting game that is currently its most popular title.
Nakamoto Games will follow their success with its first 3D game, Escape, in Q1 2022. It’s the most ambitious release to date with the inclusion of advanced computer graphics and fully-featured game mechanics and multiplayer features aside from the traditional play-to-earn in-game dynamics that have taken the gaming world by storm. Escape will be one of the first AAA games to be released in the Web3 gaming space.
Nakamoto Games CEO Tor shared the team’s excitement about the new releases: “Our team constantly strives to push hard and deliver high-quality games to our passionate user base. We are thrilled about the upcoming release of Escape and are proud of the release of Naka Galactic and Naka Blaster and we look forward to hearing from the community about these titles.”
The team at Nakamoto Games is also enabling a fast-growing suite of Web3 games that provides players with gameplay experiences at the level of traditional titles. The release of new titles such as Naka Galactic, Naka Blaster, and Escape, as well as already successful ones like Duck Hunter, NAKA Runner, NAKA DUI, and Alien Apocalypse, are part of Nakamoto Games’ plan to build what it calls the NAKAVERSE.
The ambitious plan consists of a gaming ecosystem with its own economy powered by NAKA tokens. These will be used across games to purchase NFTs that represent digital land and game items as well as to have the ability to customize elements in the NAKAVERSE.
Nakamoto Games aims to become a solution that enables other game developers to thrive. It has chosen to build on the Polygon scaling solution for Ethereum to guarantee the scalability, security, and cost-effectiveness of these releases. In this way, Nakamoto Games seeks to provide independent game developers with the necessary infrastructure to build a gaming ecosystem that makes the most of Web3’s advantages. Eventually this will lead to a healthier industry with democratized earnings and improved monetization.
As most of us were enjoying some R&R over Christmas break, Coinbase Cloud protocol specialist Elias Simos was scouring the web for the most interesting crypto charts of 2021: 69 of them to be exact.
In the latest Around The Block podcast, we sit down with Elias and discuss some of the most interesting data points from the year, and what it all means for the future. (High level takeaways below)
Metaverse and smart contract assets outperform
Price isn’t everything, but the two top performing assets in 2021 are indicative of broader trends throughout the year. 2021’s best performing assets were:
Metaverse gaming tokens
Smart contract platform tokens
The governance tokens of gaming worlds Axie Infinity (AXS) and The Sandbox (SAND) each posted 16,000 and 13,000 percent gains respectively. Meanwhile, platform tokens from Polygon, Terra, Solana, and Fantom, all posted 8,000% gains or more.
Given that play-to-earn gaming had a breakout year, and layer 1s not named Ethereum saw strong adoption, these trends should be of no surprise. Now let’s dig a bit deeper.
The state of Layer 1s
Ethereum’s native token (ETH) did a modest 2X over the year, while it was somewhat of a rough year for Ethereum DeFi blue chips, with the DeFiPulse index down 80% over the year vs ETH.
The price of DeFi assets doesn’t tell the entire story, however. TVL of Ethereum DeFi applications showed tremendous growth over the year, and the number of unique Ethereum addresses interacting with DeFi protocols 4x’ed.
DefiLlama and Decentral Park Capital
Regardless, ETH killers and sidechains won the year when measured by growth of overall market share.
DefiLlama and Decentral Park Capital
The great migration & the EVM standard
In May, there was $200M sitting in Ethereum bridges. That number climbed to $20B by the end of the year, underscoring the great migration of value from Ethereum to other ecosystems.
Remember that the EVM is essentially the brain of Ethereum that performs computations for the network. When other Layer 1s adopt the EVM, it makes deploying existing applications on new networks easier for developers, in addition to making it easier for users to migrate to these new chains.
The dominance of value on EVM compatible chains (Avalanche, Polygon, etc) suggest that a standard is forming around the EVM. This should ultimately keep Ethereum as the gravitational center of the smart contracting world, as ETH applications and assets will be natively interoperable with most other chains.
Rise of the app chains
While EVM chains still dominate the landscape, the end of 2021 saw a rise in value on Tendermint chains. Recall that Tendermint is a standard popularized by Cosmos, that lets developers build application specific blockchains that are capable of interoperating with one another.
Building app-specific chains in the past came with significant opportunity cost, because they were cut off from most liquidity and users. With the growth of Tendermint chains like Osmosis (AMM), Umee (lending), and Stargaze (NFTs), that’s becoming less of an issue.
Now that these app specific chains have a widening array of use cases and liquidity that they can interoperate with, look for more builders to take advantage of customizability that these chains offer in 2022.
The ENS airdrop + DAOs
In 2021, ENS reminded everyone of Web3’s native user acquisition strategy: the airdrop.
ENS (Ethereum Name Service) addresses are best thought of as email addresses that you can send money to (e.g. Jimbo.eth). After 5 years in development, the project shifted to a DAO model, and airdropped ENS governance tokens to every user with an ENS address.
Since the ENS DAO treasury collects revenue from new .eth registrations, revenue for the newly minted ENS DAO treasury ramped up significantly: another testament to how much a well orchestrated airdrop can move the needle.
Dune Analytics, matoken.eth
Beyond ENS, DAOs had a strong year, evident by the growing usage in key pieces of DAO infrastructure. Gnosis Safe, which is the most popular multisig wallet DAOs use to manage their treasuries, saw 3x growth in both the number of Safes and transactions executed in 2021. Snapshot, a tool that helps DAOs execute off-chain votes with on-chain verification, exhibited strong growth as well.
EN-EFF-TEES
Activity on the dominant platform for NFTs tells you all you need to know about the breakout year NFTs enjoyed.
Dune Analytics, Richard Chen
OG NFT CryptoPunks saw 60x YoY growth, reaching a total volume of 650K ETH, or $1.7B at current prices. This figure however, includes a flashloan powered $500M wash sale — a powerful reminder of how much subjectivity there is in on-chain data.
The second most notable NFT project of the year was Bored Ape Yacht Club, which went from a niche community to the celebrity NFT of choice, including the likes of Steph Curry, Shaq, Justin Bieber, Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, among others. At one point the BAYC floor (price of the cheapest NFT in the collection) momentarily flipped the CryptoPunks floor.
In the heat of new issuances flooding the market, and older NFT collections achieving billion dollar market caps, the average price of NFTs changing hands did a 150x from 0.1 ETH to roughly 15 ETH by year end.
Dune Analytics, Richard Chen
One of the most interesting NFT launches of the year was Loot (covered here), which let anyone mint 1 of 8,000 NFTs that could form the basis of a Dungeons and Dragon style RPG game. Initial excitement was skyhigh, before fizzling out as time went on.
Dune Analytics
While Loot’s flame may have dimmed, it was still a landmark year for NFT based gaming, with the breakaway success of Axie Infinity bringing play-to-earn and GameFi narratives to the forefront. As the data shows, Axie Infinity NFT volume dwarfs that of any prior NFT based game.
CryptoSlam and The Block
Lastly, while Ethereum was the center of the NFT show, marketplaces appear to be springing up across multiple chains. The data shows that lower fee environments are enabling different types of user activity. Solana’s Magic Eden, for example, has more transactions than OpenSea since users are unencumbered by exorbitant gas fees.
More in Elias’s epic thread
Beyond being chock-full of illuminating data points on the year in crypto and Web3, the full thread underscores the beauty of on-chain data and the increased maturity of the industry. The ability for one person to put together a dataset this rich is a testament to all of the great data providers the industry now has at our disposal.
With roughly nine months until major federal and state elections, New York State gubernatorial candidate Jumaane Williams is making crypto mining an issue in his campaign, criticizing the lack of regulatory clarity.
Speaking to climate activists and protestors at Seneca Lake in upstate New York on Monday, Williams called on current Governor Kathy Hochul to deny permits for proof-of-work crypto mining firms seeking to operate in the state, citing potential environmental concerns as well as any “harmful” economic impact. The gubernatorial candidate cited China’s crackdown on proof-of-work miners to back his claims.
“Twenty percent of America’s mines operate in New York state without any oversight or regulation,” said Williams. “We need to ask questions now rather than dealing with the fallout later by creating the right infrastructure to protect Seneca Lake and all of New York state from harmful economic and environmental impacts.”
Bitcoin mines that use a ‘proof-of-work’ process have the potential to devastate the environment & local economy, so today I joined advocates & community members on #SenecaLake to call on @GovKathyHochul to declare a moratorium on this type of mining. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/DHWFmmuv72
Politicians and activists have often targeted crypto mining operations around Seneca Lake and across the state. In June, a bill that would have required miners in New York to halt operations for three years — but exempted certain projects operating on renewable energy — in an effort to slow the environmental impact of crypto was defeated in the state’s legislature.
Greenidge Generation’s Bitcoin (BTC) plant operates in the area and aims to dedicate 85 megawatts to crypto mining in 2022. Residents near Seneca Lake have previously claimed that Greenidge’s plant was heating up the body of water and releasing greenhouse gases, threatening the ecosystem of several species of fish and otherwise damaging the environment.
The company has repeatedly denied such claims and threatened to consider “all legal remedies available” against thactivists pushing them. However, New York Commissioner of Environmental Conservation Basil Seggos has also criticized Greenidge, saying in September the firm “has not shown compliance with NY’s climate law” in regards to its BTC mining operations.
Related: New York businesses ask governor to deny permits for crypto mining
Hochul has only been in office since August following the departure of former governor Andrew Cuomo, but will face Williams and other gubernatorial candidates in a November 2022 election. During her time as governor, Hochul has nominated Adrienne Harris to lead New York State’s Department of Financial Services.
Dubai, UAE, Jan 31st, 2022 — MRHB DeFi, the world’s first decentralized finance ecosystem platform focused on ethical, sustainable and halal crypto opportunities, has successfully raised a total of USD 5.5 million through a series of private and public funding rounds which culminated in an initial DEX offering (IDO) that was oversubscribed on the DODO and ZeeDO launchpads.
Prior to its IDO, the startup gave the community direct access through two public sales on its official website, which saw tremendous support from its community of over 50,000 members.
“Our fundingrounds have surpassed our expectations and prove beyond doubt the huge demand for ethics in the cryptoverse,” said MRHB DeFi CEO Naquib Mohammed. “We want to take the opportunity to express our heartfelt appreciation for our valued partners and loyal supporters, without whom we would not have made it this far. These are just the first steps of our ambitious multi-year journey that we have begun, together with our community, to ensure that everyone can participate in building an ecosystem where trust and values matter — hence giving access to the growing opportunities of the crypto-economy.”
The ethical startup is also backed by investors and partners which include Polygon Technology, Sheesha Finance, Australian Gulf Capital, Mozaic, NewTribe Capital, Blockchain Australia, Contango Digital Assets, Masary Capital, ZKSync, Acreditus Partners, EMGS Group, Sinofy Group, Sukhavati Protocol and MKD Capital amongst others.
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela
MRHB began as an idea 15 months ago, when Naquib, who was at that time working on Enterprise Blockchain use cases, was interviewed by a crypto news agency about the general trends of DLT.
The questions came around to the acceptance of crypto within the muslim communities in the Middle East, an interesting angle which led Naquib to delve further into the DeFi world, where he noticed the absence of halal projects. Understanding that there was a gap, he started putting down ideas and developing conversations with tech friends and like-minded connections, all of whom saw the immense possibilities with crypto but were disheartened by the absence of projects and protocols that were halal and consistent with their financial and ethical principles. The immense complexity of the cryptoverse as a whole also stood out as a further deterrent.
Resident in Saudi Arabia, he soon realised through various community discussions — both in the middle east and farther afield — that many fellow Millennials and Gen Z’ers were facing the same challenges and were hence avoiding the entire cryptoverse. This meant that many communities — especially Muslims — were excluded from the opportunities in this new tech frontier. Thus began his journey of taking on the challenge and goal of building a landmark halal project in the DeFi ecosystem.
Over the course of six months, Naquib assembled a team that included not just developers but reputable industry professionals and Shariah experts, all of whom shared his vision of creating an ethical DeFi ecosystem that reflects community values and beliefs. It would be the first to fill a major gap in the crypto space and address the needs of communities that number more than a billion, who have all thus far been excluded due to ethics, faith, fear and complexity.
While the DeFi offerings were aimed at adhering to ethical investment and financing principles rooted in Islamic Finance (primarily the prohibition on interest-based lending and income, and sectors deemed unethical or exploitative like gambling, pornography etc), MRHB would also be focused on removing technological complexity. Thus the overall objective was to build a more empowering and ethical community-focused platform that would also cater to those new to crypto while addressing the negative perception created by extensive instances of fraud, risk and opacity in the crypto space.
The Islamic Finance sector is the first target and is the largest and most active faith-based market. It is currently sized at around USD 3 trillion — attracting even a small portion of Islamic liquidity into DeFi will represent a major boost to the total value of the DeFi sector worldwide.
Community Focused and Community Supported
Approximately 85% of the funds raised came from the MRHB global community which spans from Canada to Australia — all of whom are looking for an ethical and halal entry into the cryptoverse. The inclusive startup is aptly named, with MRHB being short for “Marhaba”, which means “welcome” in Arabic, as the project ushers in entire crypto newbie communities.
The platform’s $MRHB token is now available for trades on PancakeSwap, one of the leading decentralized exchanges on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network and remains above the launch price in spite of overall bearish markets.
To reward the community and encourage more market liquidity, a 5 million pool of MRHB token rewards has been set aside for token holders who provide liquidity to the MRHB/BNB pool on PancakeSwap. These rewards are for the next two months and apply on top of their share of trading fees earned. Token lockups for early project supporters will begin soon, allowing liquidity providers to invest their $MRHB tokens and receive additional rewards.
MRHB DeFi is already moving forward with their production roadmap, having recently launched its Souq NFT Marketplace, the first NFT marketplace guaranteed to contain halal-only content. The launch of Sahal Wallet, a non-custodial mobile wallet featuring filtering technology that will allow for frictionless access to halal tokens, is slated for the middle of next month. The pioneering Liquidity Harvester, MRHB’s passive and stable crypto income product, will be launching in Q2 and the project is currently in advanced discussions with pioneering regulated institutional partners to offer halal crypto-wealth products. More decentralized and centralized exchange listings are also coming up in the near future, welcome news for the MRHB community.
About MRHB DeFi
MRHB DeFi is a halal, decentralised finance platform built to embody the true spirit of an “Ethical and Inclusive DeFi” by following faith-based financial and business principles, where all excluded communities can benefit from the full empowerment potential of DeFi.
The diverse team is comprised of researchers, technocrats, influencers, Islamic fintech experts & business entrepreneurs, who came together to ensure that MRHB DeFi prevails in a manner that will impact society as a whole, essentially bridging the gap between the faith-conscious communities and the blockchain world.
The crypto market seems to have lost its luster for a while now, with the overall market valuation falling below $2-trillion. Despite Bitcoin’s 13th birthday celebrations, the crypto carnage has persisted. The blue-chip cryptos are now battling for action with a dramatic drop in volumes. However, the current drop has not affected some tokens and has not deterred investors, who are now looking for tokens to fill their bags. Here are a few expert-picked crypto tokens that are showing great potential.
Axie Infinity ($AXS)
Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn game that allows users to buy, breed, and sell Axies (pets) against one another in order to win in-game crypto called the smooth love potions, which you can convert into real money.
Players can cash out their tokens regularly. Smooth Love Potion ($SLP) and Axie Infinity Shard ($AXS) are the two types of tokens in the game, and both are tradable on crypto exchanges. $SLP is used for in-game transactions and rewards whereas $AXS is the governance token that powers the entire ecosystem. Axie Infinity, which runs on its own sidechain Ronin, has gained enormous popularity in 2021.
Decentraland ($MANA)
$MANA is the native token of Decentraland, a growing blockchain-powered virtual world based on the Ethereum blockchain. This project began in 2017 as a foundation for developing multiplayer games, but it quickly gained traction due to the metaverse buzz in 2021. The Decentraland Builder contains hundreds of 3D objects that players can use to build or manufacture nearly anything in this virtual environment as game tokens.
Players can use free and open marketplaces to buy and sell virtual parcels built inside Decentraland. It comes as no surprise that $MANA is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies of 2021. Players can also use $MANA to buy in-game items like avatar costumes, as well as vote on future Decentraland developments where a single $MANA token represents a single vote.
Gala ($GALA)
Gala is a P2E game based on the Ethereum network with its own native token called $GALA. It was founded in 2019 by Eric Schiermeyer, one of the co-founders of the leading mobile game company Zynga, that created popular games like Mafia Wars and Farmville. The game already has 1.3 million registered users and its goal with blockchain is to give users more power over their gaming experiences.
The game aims to change the reality in which players spend thousands of dollars on in-game items and spend countless hours playing the game, only to have it all taken away with the click of a button. Gala leverages NFTs that allow users to vote on new games and influence how they operate. $GALA token is the heart of the system that can be used to purchase NFTs as well as in-game items. Gala One has already released their flagship game Town Star, and there are many more games in the works that are expected to launch in 2022.
The Sandbox ($SAND)
The Sandbox is an Ethereum-based project that allows users to construct and explore galaxies in a virtual cosmos. Initially, it launched as a normal mobile and PC game but Animoca Brands then turned into a blockchain gaming ecosystem powered by crypto and NFTs.
Players in the system create and design their own characters in order to access the Sandbox metaverse’s many landscapes, games, and centers. The produced digital objects may then be monetized with NFTs and sold for $SAND tokens on the Sandbox Marketplace. Unlike other popular play-to-earn games, the Sandbox does not have a preset gameplay universe. Instead, it takes a dynamic approach, allowing users to personalize anything using free and easy design tools.
FireZard ($ZARD)
FireZard is a new P2E game based on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network. It is the first Trading Card Game that passively and instantly rewards investors in an attractive and collectible way through NFTs. The game revolves around the major five dragons that are employed to compete with other players. Each FireZard NFT Card represents a dragon and has its own set of features.
Moreover, the Cards are not only collectible, but they have an instant win prize attached to them that is worth anything from 0.1 BNB to 5 BNB. Players of this game are massively rewarded with the game’s native tokens, $ZARD, and $FLAME. $FLAME tokens will only be used for in-game activities, whereas $ZARD tokens will play a much larger role in propelling the platform. With the game still in its early stages, $ZARD is expected to explode in the coming months.
2022 Will be the Year of Gaming Crypto
Blockchain gaming is a rapidly expanding area within the crypto and blockchain sectors, and it is likely to expand more in the coming months. These are some of the projects that have a lot of potential and should be looked into further for 2022 and beyond.
Interoperability is shaping up to be one of the main themes for the cryptocurrency market in 2022 as projects across the ecosystem unveil integrations that make their networks Ethereum (ETH) Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible.
While this has been one of the long-term goals of the ecosystem as a step on the path to an interconnected network of protocols, it has also created a new decentralized finance (DeFi) market for multi-chain bridges and decentralized finance.
Here are three of the top volume cross-chain bridges that the cryptocurrency community uses to transfer assets between blockchain networks.
Multichain
Multichain (MULTI), formerly known as Anyswap, is a cross-chain router protocol that aims to become the go-to router for the emerging Web3 ecosystem.
According to data from Defi Llama, Multichain is the top-ranked cross-chain swap protocol by total value locked, with $8.95 billion currently locked on the platform.
Multichain total value locked. Source: Defi Llama
One of the main reasons for the high TVL on Multichain is the large number of blockchain networks supported by the protocol. Currently, 30 different chainscan be accessed on the network.
Blockchain protocols supported by Multichain. Source: Multichain
According to data provided by Multichain, the protocol has processed a total of $53.15 billion worth of volume since launching, with $19.08 billion of that being transacted in the past 30 days alone. There are currently 485,399 users that have interacted with the Multichain protocol, amounting to nearly 2.256 million transactions.
Multichain network statistics. Source: Multichain
Users who deposit tokens into one of the pools supported by Multichain receive a sare of the transaction fees generated by the pool in question.
The protocol’s native MULTI token is used to vote and participate in the governance of the Multichain ecosystem and has a circulating supply of 18.64 million tokens out of a total 100 million.
Synapse
Synapse (SYN) refers to itself as a “cross-chain layer ∞ protocol” that is designed to offer users interoperability between separate blockchain networks.
According to data from Defi Llama, Synapse recently hit an all-time high in total value locked of $1.16 billion prior to experiencing a wave of outflows that lowered the TVL to 740.43 million.
Total value locked on Synapse. Source: Defi Llama
The Synapse protocol currently supports 12 different chains which have a combined total bridged volume of $5.33 billion according to data from the platform’s dashboard.
Total bridged volume on each network supported by Synapse. Source: Synapse
A large percentage of the total volume recorded on Synapse has come since the start of 2022 with the protocol seeing an all-time high bridge volume of $157.8 million on Jan. 23.
Synapse bridge volume. Source: Synapse Analytics
The protocol’s native SYN token has several uses within the ecosystem. Token holders can use it to conduct community governance votes via the SynapseDAO, liquidity providers (LPs) receive a percentage yield paid out in SYN for their deposits and it is also used as a subsidy to pay for the gas expended by network validators to secure transactions across the network.
LPs also receive a share of the protocol fees earned by the Synapse platform on each transaction.
Related: Web3 innovations are replacing middlemen with middleware protocols
Celer cBridge
Another popular cross-chain bridge is the Celer cBridge, a multi-chain network that enables instant, low-cost value transfers between 19 different networks.
The cBridge is a subsector of the larger Celer (CELR) ecosystem and utilizes the CELR token for operations on the protocol and as the reward token for liquidity providers.
Along with the CELR rewards paid to LPs, a percentage of the transaction fees generated by people who use the liquidity pools to bridge funds across chains are paid out to LPs and added directly to the pools, allowing the rewards to compound.
According to data from cBridge analytics, the total value of funds locked in the bridge contract (pool-based bridge) and the funds locked in the token vault contract (canonical token bridge) currently stands at $240.92 million.
cBridge usage statistics. Source: cBridge
A total of 89,897 unique addresses have interacted with the protocol since inception and have conducted a total of $2.842 billion in transaction volume.
Similar to the transfer trend seen with Synapse, the transaction volume on cBridge has gotten noticeably higher in 2022 with a record $71.12 million being transacted on Jan. 22.
Daily transaction volume on cBridge. Source: cBridge analytics
Some of the protocols currently supported by cBridge include Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Polygon, Fantom, Metis, Harmony, Gnosis, Arbitrum and Optimism.
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The price of Bitcoin has been recovering after a major slump into the low $30,000s. As of press time, BTC trades at $37,774 with a 1.9% profit in the last 24-hours and could see more gains in the short term.
Related Reading | Fidelity Says What We’ve Been Thinking: Countries & Central Banks Will Buy BTC
BTC on a downtrend in the 4-hour chart. Source: BTCUSD Tradingview
Bitcoin’s most recent recovery could be tied to the relief in the traditional market. At the time of writing, the S&P 500 Index records a +105 points or 1.44% profit in the 4-hour chart.
The cryptocurrency has displayed high levels of correlations with U.S. stocks and could continue to track them in the short term. In that sense, Bitcoin bulls could find backup on a sustained stock relief rally.
Data from Material Indicators shows some resistance, in lower timeframes, above BTC’s price current levels. Therefore, $39,000, and $40,000 have become important resistance levels that need to turn into support.
In case of further downside, Material Indicators records around $3 million in biding orders for Bitcoin near $36,000. These levels could operate as critical support on a bearish scenario, for lower timeframes, and must hold in order to prevent a re-test of previous lows near $33,000.
In the coming months, the bullish momentum could resume at full force, according to a report conducted by Finder. After consulting with a panel of 33 experts on the potential price scenarios for Bitcoin across multiple timeframes.
The consensus amongst these experts is bullish, a prediction that defies current market sentiment. The potential increase in interest rates by the U.S. Federal Reserve could operate as a headwind for Bitcoin. At least, this seems to be the dominating narrative for some market operators.
A Bitcoin Rally Before Another Multi-Year Bear Market?
As seen below, the experts have progressively flipped their bias from bullish for the better part of January, to neutral in the past week, and bearish for the week of February 6, 2022. The potential impact from the interest rates hike by the FED, the experts say, will remain a top concern for investors during the first part of the current year.
(The) first half of 2022 will be dominated by concerns over higher interest rates, which will impact all risk assets including Bitcoin. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Bitcoin decline a further 30% from current levels.
In that sense, over 50% of the interview panel believe Bitcoin could come out on top on an increasing interest rate scenario. The experts believe BTC’s price will peak at $93,717 in the next months, only to return to a $76,360 by the end of 2022.
Source: Finder’s Bitcoin Price Predictions Report
Related Reading |Bitcoin Bearish Signal: Binance Observes Massive Inflow Of 10k BTC
BTC’s price rally will be drive by more inflation. As NewsBTC has been reporting, Mike McGlone, Senior Commodity Strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, has a similar point of view and has claimed the cryptocurrency will start to outperform stocks, and other risk-on assets. Finder’s panel added:
It is possible that the asset bubble the Fed created by keeping interest rates near 0% for over a decade may spill over into Bitcoin. However, the cryptocurrency has the gold-like fundamentals and trust to weather the storm better than its peers.
Yesterday, Grayscale published an update regarding the company’s digital assets under management. Due to the latest plunge in cryptocurrency assets, the overall value of its digital assets under management (AUM) dipped substantially in the last few weeks.
The crypto asset manager now holds approximately $32 billion worth of assets under management. In April 2021, the overall value of Grayscale’s crypto AUM topped $50 billion. Bitcoin and Ethereum remained the top 2 digital holdings of Grayscale.
According to the latest numbers published by the company, it now has over $23 billion worth of BTC assets under management. Grayscale is also holding more than $7 billion worth of ETH assets under management.
With BTC and ETH trading nearly 50% off from their respective all-time highs, the latest dip in the value of Grayscale’s digital AUM was expected. Compared to the start of 2021, the company’s crypto assets under management are still up in value. Grayscale started 2021 with approximately $20 billion worth of digital AUM.
Crypto Market
With a market cap drop of more than $1.3 trillion in the last 10 weeks, the crypto market is going through one of its worst corrections. However, the digital assets showed some signals of stability in the past week. In the last 7 days, BTC gained almost 7% while BNB and DOGE spiked by more than 10%.
“Ethereum has regained the $2,550 level to end the week. With Bitcoin ending the week with a nice push of its own, and ETH’s active address remaining stable, the number 2 crypto asset by market cap should maintain stable prices if utility continues rising,” Santiment noted.
“Chainlink’s price was cut in half between January 10th and 24th. The crowd predictably became quite negative toward the popular ETH-based asset. Today, with the FUD appearing to be at its peak, LINK has rebounded a modest +7% in the past 4 hours,” the company added.
Yesterday, Grayscale published an update regarding the company’s digital assets under management. Due to the latest plunge in cryptocurrency assets, the overall value of its digital assets under management (AUM) dipped substantially in the last few weeks.
The crypto asset manager now holds approximately $32 billion worth of assets under management. In April 2021, the overall value of Grayscale’s crypto AUM topped $50 billion. Bitcoin and Ethereum remained the top 2 digital holdings of Grayscale.
According to the latest numbers published by the company, it now has over $23 billion worth of BTC assets under management. Grayscale is also holding more than $7 billion worth of ETH assets under management.
With BTC and ETH trading nearly 50% off from their respective all-time highs, the latest dip in the value of Grayscale’s digital AUM was expected. Compared to the start of 2021, the company’s crypto assets under management are still up in value. Grayscale started 2021 with approximately $20 billion worth of digital AUM.
Crypto Market
With a market cap drop of more than $1.3 trillion in the last 10 weeks, the crypto market is going through one of its worst corrections. However, the digital assets showed some signals of stability in the past week. In the last 7 days, BTC gained almost 7% while BNB and DOGE spiked by more than 10%.
“Ethereum has regained the $2,550 level to end the week. With Bitcoin ending the week with a nice push of its own, and ETH’s active address remaining stable, the number 2 crypto asset by market cap should maintain stable prices if utility continues rising,” Santiment noted.
“Chainlink’s price was cut in half between January 10th and 24th. The crowd predictably became quite negative toward the popular ETH-based asset. Today, with the FUD appearing to be at its peak, LINK has rebounded a modest +7% in the past 4 hours,” the company added.
The Boston Security Token Exchange (BSTX), a new facility of the Boston-based BOX exchange, received regulatory approval from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to operate as a blockchain-based securities exchange.
BSTX was launched jointly by BOX and Overstock’s blockchain arm tZERO, originally seeking approval for launching publicly-traded registered security tokens. However, the SEC approval to operate as a national securities exchange allows BSTX to use blockchain technology for faster settlements in traditional markets. According to the SEC,
“The Commission notes that the [BSTX] Exchange’s current proposal does not involve the trading of digital tokens and such a proposal, or any other additional use of blockchain technology.”
While the SEC has previously denied BSTX permission to offer crypto-focused services, the latest approval allows the facility to use a proprietary market data feed, BSTX Market Data Blockchain.
In addition, BSTX will also use blockchain technology to help investors experience faster transaction times on the same day (“T+0”) or the next day (“T+1”), instead of the standard two business-day (“T+2”) settlement cycle sported by traditional markets.
Along with the regulatory approval based on BSTX’s rule change proposals (SR-BOX-2021-06), the SEC placed four conditions for BOX in line with BSTX’s operations.
The requirement includes joining all relevant national market system plans related to equities trading, ensuring Regulatory Services Agreement with FINRA, Intermarket Surveillance Group membership for the BSTX facility, and an applicable governance structure.
Related: SEC reportedly probing crypto lending products by Gemini and Celsius
In line with the above developments, the SEC is also reportedly reviewing some of the high-yield crypto lending products offered by Gemini, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital.
As Cointelegraph reported, the SEC is conducting an inquiry into considering registering crypto lending services as securities. A Bloomberg report on the matter suggests that the SEC’s main concern lies with the high-yield offering by crypto lending services.
In the latest crypto sell-off, BTC holders suffered huge losses. However, there was one bright spot for the holders of Bitcoin. The overall market dominance of the most valuable digital currency spiked by more than 4% in the last 8 weeks and crossed 42% on Friday.
In a jittery season for crypto bulls, the overall value of digital currencies plunged by approximately $1.4 trillion since 10 November 2021. The latest surge in BTC’s market dominance indicates that other digital currencies dropped more than Bitcoin in the recent market sell-off.
To put things into perspective, Ethereum has lost nearly 20% of its value just in the last 7 days. The correction in Solana was even worst as SOL dipped by 30% during the same period. Bitcoin performed relatively better with a drop of just 6% during the recent week.
In terms of drawdown from its all-time high levels, BTC is currently trading nearly 48% down from its all-time high level in November 2021. Cryptocurrency assets like Solana and Dogecoin are down 65% and 75%, respectively from their all-time highs.
Bitcoin Transfer Volume and Whales
With weak sentiment among retail traders, BTC whales are dominating the current market. Large transactions currently account for most of the trading volume. “Bitcoin transfer volumes continue to be dominated by institutional size flows, with more than 65% of all transactions being larger than $1M in value. The uptrend in institutional dominance in on-chain volumes started around Oct 2020 when prices were around $10k to $11k,” Glassnode noted.
“BTC whale addresses with 100+ Bitcoin continue their long-term pattern of accumulation during this volatility in the 34k to 38k range. In the past 5 years, 1.7M BTC has been added to these large addresses, including 60k more in the past 2 months,” Santiment highlighted in a Tweet.
In the latest crypto sell-off, BTC holders suffered huge losses. However, there was one bright spot for the holders of Bitcoin. The overall market dominance of the most valuable digital currency spiked by more than 4% in the last 8 weeks and crossed 42% on Friday.
In a jittery season for crypto bulls, the overall value of digital currencies plunged by approximately $1.4 trillion since 10 November 2021. The latest surge in BTC’s market dominance indicates that other digital currencies dropped more than Bitcoin in the recent market sell-off.
To put things into perspective, Ethereum has lost nearly 20% of its value just in the last 7 days. The correction in Solana was even worst as SOL dipped by 30% during the same period. Bitcoin performed relatively better with a drop of just 6% during the recent week.
In terms of drawdown from its all-time high levels, BTC is currently trading nearly 48% down from its all-time high level in November 2021. Cryptocurrency assets like Solana and Dogecoin are down 65% and 75%, respectively from their all-time highs.
Bitcoin Transfer Volume and Whales
With weak sentiment among retail traders, BTC whales are dominating the current market. Large transactions currently account for most of the trading volume. “Bitcoin transfer volumes continue to be dominated by institutional size flows, with more than 65% of all transactions being larger than $1M in value. The uptrend in institutional dominance in on-chain volumes started around Oct 2020 when prices were around $10k to $11k,” Glassnode noted.
“BTC whale addresses with 100+ Bitcoin continue their long-term pattern of accumulation during this volatility in the 34k to 38k range. In the past 5 years, 1.7M BTC has been added to these large addresses, including 60k more in the past 2 months,” Santiment highlighted in a Tweet.
