Top cryptocurrency events in 2021

[TL;DR]

The past year was undoubtedly a wild year for crypto, many events happened in the crypto space that laid off a number of developments, which could be called a step along the way to our digital future.
In this article, you'll be able to take a look at the major events that date back to the beginning of the year 2021.

To understand the statistics of cryptocurrency in 2021, let's have a quick walk through what happened on August 11 2020, when Michael Saylor, the microstrategy CEO announced that his firm was making a long term investment of $250 million in Bitcoin, he described Bitcoin as a “dependable store of value and an attractive asset with more long term appreciation potential than cash”

A short while after this dialogue between Elon Musk & Michael Saylor, Tesla unveiled its biggest Bitcoin endorsement to date.

They announced that it would invest $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and soon accept crypto payments for its products.

Few days into 2021, cryptocurrency had totally exploded, with Bitcoin pushing up to 300% or more, from Michael Saylor's Microstrategy and Elon Musk’s movement with Tesla.

Tesla's move into Bitcoin began to raise speculations of what company would come next? The internet was becoming overwhelmed!

A multimillionaire company like Tesla entrusted a significant portion of it's balance sheet into crypto, so why not? Soon after, companies like PayPal&Visa hopped into the crypto space.

- 2021 goes down as the biggest wave of institutional Bitcoin adoption in history.

Elon musk started promoting Doge coins, which is a meme coin that dates back to 2014

He had multiple tweets that were prompting people to buy the coin,
Elon Musk’s tweets on Dogecoin also had a role to play in this surge in interest for the “meme coins," which led more beginners to get interested in crypto.

The backing was there, and yes! Doge coins went to the moon, and it drove an entire class of crypto investors to useless coins with no fundamentals.

The terrible crash that happened in the crypto space in mid-2021, didn't spare dogecoin, people felt extremely burned by Elon when doge went from 69 cents to 17 cents, where it sits today.

The lesson from Memecoin mania is that attention is everything, it doesn't matter how much technology surrounds the coin.

Another lesson the midyear crash thought us was "Don't always trust the news"

Bitcoin’s pricing witnessed an all-time high price of $64,899 in April 2021, it soon turned into a bloodbath, when it split in half in a matter of 2 months.

Musk also tweeted that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin as payment due to environmental concerns, as a result, the price of Bitcoin dropped around 15 percent.

China, being one of crypto's biggest markets, also declared all cryptocurrency transactions illegal and banned citizens from working for crypto-related companies.

Everything started to flip over, it seemed like a dream, more or less a nightmare.

But it soon became clear through on-chain metrics that big whale buyers continued to buy the dip.

It was a manipulative move, created by the whales to cause people who hold valuable crypto assets to sell at cheap prices.

But in the end, BTC hits a new ATH of $69k in November 2021, the Crypto cycle is a powerful cycle, even the whales can stop its circulation.

The year also started with an NFT boom in January. -non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

NFTs are digital tokens that represent something unique and linked to the blockchain. They have value as they cannot be altered or replicated, they are also able to prove the authenticity of digital or physical items.

The most expensive NFT in 2021 was Everydays By Beeple, which was sold for $69million in an online auction.

Crypto punk also sold for $11.8 million as part of the Sotheby's online auction, this was when more people started to see NFTs as a legitimate and an astronomically high dollar ticket.

But the market soon shifted
to "Bored Ape yacht club" the third most important innovation in the NFT space.

Bored ape owners received up to 20,000 dollars as airdrops, shortly after Steve curry ( American professional Basketballer) and Rapper "Post malon" joined the "Bored Ape yacht club."

Bored Ape yacht club created new crypto punks, with each character having its own unique traits based on range number generation.

Bored Ape reached as high as 70 ETH, and came down by 30 ETH, but it continued to grow in value to its present 60 ETH floor.

This event showed how Resilient NFTs are and how they can serve as an astounding "store of value."

NFTs is by far one of the biggest highlights of crypto in 2021, it rejuvenated crypto during the terrible mid-year crash, and the web has acknowledged it as an innovation that's here to stay.

Social media platforms like Instagram and Reddit announced plans for the NFT marketplace.

According to Google "Twitter allows your full collection of NFTs to be stored in a tab on your profile, labeled Collectibles. Once selected, your profile picture will have a small badge that verifies that it's a real NFT.

In 2021, NFT gaming has also gained traction, and Axie Infinity is a good example.

Axie Infinity is an NFT-based game that allows you to play-to-earn by trading, battling, or even breeding new adorable characters called Axies, it was a huge dynamic that allows you to earn XLPs and play games with NFT assets.

By October 2021, there were over two million monthly active users using the game, which led to an impressive 953 percent monthly volume growth.

Usually, NFTs are hosted on Ethereum networks, which means that you have to buy an Ethereum token.

More companies started to adopt crypto, companies like Tesla and Square both hold reserves in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is basically digital gold, as it has a limited supply and it is impossible to counterfeit.

Companies like Adidas and Nike have also joined the metaverse sneaker wars.

adidas collaborated with Bored Ape Yacht Club for one of their "Into The Metaverse" projects, which allow fans to buy limited edition Adidas merchandise using the NFT program. Nike also acquired a company that makes virtual shoes and sneakers.

As more companies move towards the metaverse, these brands are making a move to establish themselves in the space.

Countries also got involved with cryptocurrency, that's one of the biggest highlights of 2021

In September, the government of El Salvador announced that they now accept Bitcoin as their national currency, making it the first-ever country to adopt Bitcoin as a legal means of payment.


We can't leave out the CBDCs
( Central Bank Digital Currencies) which is a digital currency that is run on the blockchain developed by central banks.


Closing thoughts

The 2021 crash was brutal but it produced an even more sustainable advancement in crypto space, which will make people's lives better.

2021 cryptocurrency run down taught us that narratives are short-lived and that exponential growth can come from sectors that people believe are utterly useless.

And lastly, Attention matters, more can happen in a year than you could ever imagine in 10 years, and if you spend more time studying the market, you'll definitely do better.

Most of the trends we've discussed have set themselves up well for 2022, making us extremely enthusiastic as we step into the new year.


Author: Gate.io Observer: M. Olatunji
Disclaimer:
* This article represents only the views of the observers and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
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