How crypto fared in 2021

Published in

The Capital

8 min readDec 27, 2021

Jack Dorsey’s Square Capital and that PayPal news might have steered us in green through the last quarter of 2020, but a whole lot has happened since then. Good, bad, amazing…you can make a long list of crypto events that fit into each of these adjectives. It will be tough to properly categorize China’s (100th) bitcoin ban though. The communist nation has continued with its crackdown on crypto-related activities.

In a completely opposite event, bitcoin is currently a nationally recognized currency in a central American country. We’ll leave you in suspense for now…

Well, since everyone is very much interested in the ‘money’ aspect… A whole lot of artists have made millions of dollars selling digitized asset signatures on NFT markets. Elsewhere, a memecoin investor might have just made more money than Jeff Greene. Maybe memecoins are a better investment than Real estate anyways…now that’s not financial advice. Following a dog-themed project — Shiba Inu’s historic run, an (unknown) investor’s $8,000 initial investment was worth well over $5 billion at some point. The story is different for most squid game (SQUID) investors.

A Crazy year it was, only the year 2017 comes close. Four years after the run that saw bitcoin hit $19,000, we have another year that can’t fit into one discussion.

DeFi, NFTs, Cross-chains, Metaverse, and of course, MemeCoins each of these made huge waves in just one year. Bitcoin has dominated the political headlines, while Altcoins have dominated the technological aspect of crypto-related news.

Alright, there’s a whole lot to talk about here. We take them one after the other;

Helluva pump; Helluva ‘crash’!

You caught that pump, right? There were a whole lot of them; it’s hard not to catch any. I caught a few. Literally, every cryptocurrency jumped in price. The last time this happened was in 2017! Bitcoin tumbled multiple times to an all-time high of $68,700, ethereum almost touched $5000; Solana, Binance coin…too many to count.

Thanks to technological and marketing breakthroughs that happened simultaneously throughout the crypto space, a new set of believers were created. You wouldn’t blame them! Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology impressed me in a way they have never done since my first encounter. For a moment, I thought we had already taken over the world…yes, we did! But these price jerks don’t come without some serious correction. As serious as going down below $35,000 after going above $60,000.

Meteoritic rise, followed by a tangible correction, and the cycle continued to repeat itself. Hell of a ride! I’m still caught in the wave and wish we could have a long year, but the best things are waiting for us in 2022…let’s go!

GameFi — the Play-to-earn trend

How much did you earn from playing blockchain games? A handful of people quit their day jobs to focus on their play-to-earn careers. Good luck to their former employees in finding a replacement! Actually, many people did quit their day jobs to focus on their cryptocurrency careers. Cryptocurrency being a more lucrative venture should be their main reason for taking this decision. If they dropped their 9–5 for a crypto career just to get more free time, then I’m sorry…they made the worst decision. But that’s by the way.

Very fascinating, blockchain and cryptocurrency successfully penetrated another very interesting sector. GameFi projects put together, NFT technology, decentralized exchange, and simulation technologies to develop engaging ‘games’ with earning potentials. Now, it’s hard to guess what actually draws more interest towards these projects; the game or the earnings…the latter seems like a more correct answer, lol.

If you had some good luck playing these games, then you probably made some cool earnings. Else, count your loss and get ready to try again next year.

I’m personally a critic of play-to-earn, so, I didn’t try my hands on many blockchain games. However, it is impossible not to acknowledge the wave it created. One of the biggest ones this year!

Digital signatures — the NFT boom

If you didn’t sell an NFT this year, you probably bought a few or earned some through airdrops. If you did none of these, then it’s either you’re a strict bitcoin maxi, or you slept throughout 2021. Either way, you still have a long time to catch up.

I’m not an art collector, but I did get a few (cheap) NFTs, lol.

Mike Winkelman is probably considering buying an island as you read this, it’s very possible he already sealed a deal with an estate agent. After selling his artwork for about $69 million, the graphic designer popularly known as Beeple is currently one of the richest artists alive. Sixty-nine million dollars, a whole lot, I must say! The Non-fungible token bubble…Sorry, boom, took the crypto space by the storm, and for yet another time in the crypto space, money sounds like mere numbers!

Justin Sun’s $4.5 million dinner with Warren Buffet used to top my list of the most extravagant spending, but the NFT deals have taken up all these positions, and Justin Sun appears to be a very conservative spender, relatively.

Non-fungible tokens are brilliant inventions. Ethereum blockchain takes the lead once again. ERC-721 was the first standard for representing non-fungible digital assets on the Ethereum blockchain. The recent ERC-1155 smart contract token standard also supports the creation of digital signatures for items.

What’s your NFT story? I’d love to hear them!

El Salvador happened!

Located in Central America, El Salvador’s seven million citizens can now legally transact with bitcoin as a nationally recognized medium of exchange. Merchants have since updated their payment options while the government has developed an efficient wallet, and bitcoin ATMs have been positioned around the country. Hailed as the new hero of bitcoin and decentralized payment, Nayib Bukele, and his government announced this development and have since accumulated over five hundred bitcoins as the country takes its place in history.

What looked like an uphill task and an impossible goal just came to life. Bitcoin; a nationally accepted currency! Satoshi wouldn’t be less proud! Not CBDCs or USDT, it’s all the shady bitcoin creators ever wished for. The shadowy super-coders might have won this round. One city at a time, bitcoin and cryptocurrency seem to be hitting it big in the adoption race. You’ll easily get blown away by how much bitcoin has fought to get to the current stage. Global relevance and unspoken flexibility.

China; for the 100th time!

The Chinese dynasty has once again banned cryptocurrency, declared cryptocurrency transactions ‘illegal’, and vowed to crackdown on cryptocurrency…sorry, cryptocurrency exchanges, the former is near impossible. At a time where cryptocurrency is penetrating the most important sectors of the national economy and technology and proving utility, developments like this are odd. Well, not so odd. Cryptocurrency and decentralized solutions might never sit well with centralized governments, which unfortunately is the global practice.

The frequency and manner countries present cryptocurrency ban make it a fun phrase. Countries and regulatory bodies throw this phrase around to describe a common restriction on cryptocurrency-related activities within their jurisdiction. Following this phrase are numerous but rarely justifiable reasons why they are halting activities related to cryptocurrency. In this case, it is just to say that these things are done for the fun of it. Fact is, it is hard to see the fun here, but presumably, it sounds fun…to them.

Dogs of crypto

If you could attach a popular dog breed name to ‘INU,’ you are probably on your way to creating a billion-dollar cryptocurrency project. Some years ago, this feat can only be achieved by the smartest minds and wizard-level marketing strategies. Shake it off, Shiba Inu is a top twenty cryptocurrency and doesn’t even have its own blockchain. Whatever got it to this spot is actually amazing!

But that’s just one out of countless other ‘dog coins’ that have gained millions of investors and moved to ridiculous positions and made crazy gains for investors. By ‘crazy’ I mean, turning $8,000 to $5.7 billion. Jeff Greene should be regretting doing this the hard way.

It’s safe to say that Elon Musk facilitated two very interesting trends; electric cars and meme coins. Meme coins hold one thing in essence, ‘communalism.’ Interesting, to be fair; group marketing creates an enormous hype and could drive a huge buy pressure on the concerned project. Meme and moon coins utilize this idea a lot and make tangible price and community success thanks to the correct use of this strategy.

Hype marketing has played out well for a good number of cryptocurrency projects. Well-planned shills by a group of people could create thrills and lure potential investors into investing in a project despite having no clear information about the project.

Crypto meets sports!

Not sure if Kobe would be so happy about this one; his favourite playground is getting renamed, and it’s not after him. In a $700 million deal, the famous Staples center is getting renamed to ‘Crypto.com arena.’ The rich Hong Kong based exchange is taking many bold marketing steps and this is the biggest of them. Elsewhere FTX exchange is also going deep into basketball as part of its marketing strategies, the FTX arena hosts the famous Miami heat and other NBA teams.

Only a few soccer teams are yet to get a fan token, including my favourite team…I’ll leave you to guess.

Cryptocurrency project teams are leveraging sports as a more effective marketing strategy. An idea I consider ‘genius.’ Looking at the fact that sports are unarguably the most recognized source of entertainment, crypto teams are catching the fishes where they live.

We are a few days away from a brand-new year! Personally, this has been an amazing one for myself and the CryptocurrencyScript project. But before we step into what is going to be an even better year, how did your crypto journey fare in 2021?

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