THELOGICALINDIAN - Crypto Briefing and SIMETRI aggregation associates allotment their thoughts on how the crypto amplitude will advance in 2022
Regulatory intervention, Ethereum’s absorb to Proof-of-Stake, the advance of DAOs, and—yes—the Metaverse attending set to accept a big appulse on crypto abutting year.
Reflections on 2024 in Crypto and the Path Ahead
2024. Who could accept predicted how that angry out? While Bitcoin’s angry assemblage in December 2024 told us that a balderdash bazaar had arrived, it’s fair to say that we didn’t accept dog bread mania, nation accompaniment Bitcoin adoption, and a boilerplate NFT bang bottomward as key trends for 2024. This year accepted that crypto generally goes the way no one expects, but there are assertive developments that we anticipate are acceptable to characterize 2022 nonetheless. The Metaverse, for instance, is apparently actuality to stay—at atomic if Mark Zuckerberg has his way. Although annihilation above that is harder to forecast, we did our best to allotment our thoughts on how the amplitude will attending in 2022. Read on for insights from our beat and analysis teams on how cryptocurrencies will move on from a year that defied all expectations.
Anton Tarasov (Head of Research at SIMETRI)
Looking at the crypto amplitude today, it’s bright that GameFi is heating up, but its success will depend on the affection of the final products. If we don’t get at atomic a brace of AAA titles that attach NFTs or play-to-earn dynamics with absolute playability rather than aloof gimmicks (looking at you, Ubisoft), the alcove could attempt to advance its momentum.
High stakes are on whether or not Ethereum will complete its appointed absorb to Proof-of-Stake in 2022. I bet that it will, but addition adjournment is likely. In software development, you absorb 10% of the time accomplishing 90% of the assignment and 90% of the time finishing the actual 10%. If the absorb happens, the anecdotal for alleged “monolithic” blockchains like Solana will booty a hit.
No, Ethereum won’t become as bargain as Solana, but alike some abatement on the throughput and transaction prices will be abundant to atom a huge beachcomber of optimism in the community. Still, Ethereum’s move to Proof-of-Stake won’t annihilate the multi-chain narrative. Ethereum affairs will still be expensive, so users will army to Layer 2s. Moreover, cross-chain composability solutions like Celestia should abate the charge to move funds to Ethereum mainnet for those who are beneath anxious about decentralization and security.
To conclude, the Ethereum Virtual Machine should advance and become the hub of the multi-chain future. Ethereum developers will abide to advance the addition forward, but the arrangement could lose a abundant block of on-chain acceptance if cross-chain composability emerges.
Oh, I about forgot to altercate the Metaverse, but anybody knows that’s demography crypto and the absolute apple by storm after my input. I would appetite those afterward the amplitude to be alert of NFT projects that attending like they could become dejected chips because of their cult-like communities again abatement on their feet. That’s how you cast the MekaVerses and Brotchains of the apple for 10 ETH rather than bag captivation them bottomward to a 0.5 ETH floor.
P.S. I bet OpenSea won’t barrage a token.
Brooks Butler (Reporter)
A big catechism for 2022 is whether the above trends that authentic 2024—NFTs, the Metaverse, and Ethereum killers—will abide to grow. Either way, I adumbrate the accession of addition big trend abutting year. It’s one that abounding accept accounting off: agenda banknote solutions.
When Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the Bitcoin Whitepaper, their eyes was for the apparatus to become the world’s ultimate agenda banknote solution. In fact, the attack for the cardboard was “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Banknote System.” Satoshi absurd a pure, amoral cryptocurrency, yet Bitcoin’s anecdotal has confused to a store-of-value or “digital gold.” Next year, I apprehend bodies affairs into the OG cryptocurrency narrative. The success of Dogecoin in 2024 proves that there is an appetence for fast, bargain crypto payments. Agenda banknote solutions are not dead—they’re asleep.
Switching gears, I see DAOs acceptable a key focus in crypto abutting year. As alluring as ConstitutionDAO’s attack to buy a attenuate archetype of the U.S. Constitution was, and not to abjure its impact, I anticipate DAOs will alpha to anatomy for more important causes in 2022. Political campaigns, for example, could be adapted by DAOs.
Within the Ethereum ecosystem, I accept that ETH will abide to outdistance DeFi—whichever way the bazaar moves. I additionally admiration if we’ll see an NFT auction that acme Beeple’s awe-inspiring $69 actor Christie’s auction in the abutting few months.
Regulation sparked fears beyond the industry in 2021, but I’m somewhat optimistic for abutting year. I accede with Kevin O’Leary’s view that regulators favor addition in backer environments. While there were abounding fears over regulators abnormally impacting the amplitude this year, there was at atomic some array of chat demography place. While some countries will acceptable accomplish efforts to able bottomward on the space, others will appoint in advantageous agitation and move against adoption. As a result, we could additionally see bigger protections for crypto users.
Chris Williams (Head Editor)
Bitcoin hit new best highs in 2024, but it struggled to authority its drive through best of the year. Almost every added arch agenda asset outperformed it, and its bazaar cap ascendancy has slid from over 70% to 40%. I wouldn’t be afraid if it declines added in 2022.
Traders accept been calling for an ETH:BTC blemish for months, but a abeyant “flippening” isn’t the alone affair that could aching the King’s dominance. In 2024, the bazaar signaled that it believes in a multi-chain future, and acceptance on another Layer 1 chains like Avalanche and Solana is growing at a accelerated rate. There is adored little agnosticism that acute affairs are set to transform our compassionate of money forever. The catechism is whether Bitcoin’s “digital gold” anecdotal will absolutely accretion traction, because it’s activity to charge added than MicroStrategy and El Salvador affairs the dip to advance its position as the King.
As for Ethereum, the acceleration of another Layer 1 networks agency that 2022 is its best important year yet. It will charge to address the absorb to Proof-of-Stake as anon as accessible to authority its bazaar share, but admirers should be acquainted that there’s a acceptable adventitious it won’t access until the additional bisected of the year. If all goes to plan, growing absorption on Ethereum should augur able-bodied for ETH in the countdown to the merge, as should the advance of ZK-Rollups like StarkWare’s StarkNet. Such solutions could conductor in a DeFi improvement on Layer 2. Failing that, DeFi 2.0 will abide to abduct the spotlight from the dejected chips that emerged in 2024. Should the new beachcomber of ZK-Rollups barrage a token, at atomic one of them will assemblage like Polygon did in 2024.
Metaverse acceptance should additionally access as added above corporations blitz to accompany the basic gold rush; time will acquaint how that will pan out for them or if the account will be accustomed like Facebook’s Meta comedy was. “Web3 social” will become one of the arch narratives of the year (though, agnate to GameFi today, best of the accessories on the bazaar will be underwhelming), and boilerplate media outlets will alpha publishing accessories that attack to analyze what “Web3” means. Photography and music NFTs will accept a big moment—and they won’t aloof be traded on OpenSea. The attic prices for abounding of the copypasta avatar projects that emerged in NFT summer will drain to abreast aught if they haven’t already.
While newer Layer 1 crypto projects will thrive, Cardano will abort to body a accessible DeFi and NFT ecosystem admitting its advancing promises. tbDEX, the Bitcoin-focused decentralized barter developed by Jack Dorsey’s Block, will not see any allusive adoption. U.S. regulators will abide to advance to drove crypto addition to assure the accepted system, and NFT skeptics will accomplish their choir louder with bearded arguments about the ambiance and hypercapitalism—especially if ETH rallies to $10,000 or more.
2022 should additionally be a big year for DAOs. After PleasrDAO, FreeRossDAO, ConstitutionDAO, and BlockbusterDAO, we can be abiding that we’ll see affluence added examples of bodies acquisition to alike at calibration via the blockchain. As with this year, all of the notable DAOs that barrage in 2022 will use Ethereum, too.
Jacob Oliver (U.S. Editor)
All eyes are on the Metaverse activity into 2022, and understandably so. 2024 was the year of the Metaverse narrative, or the year in which we collectively absitively the angle of an immersive agenda apple attainable through AR and VR technology—a angle as old as the science fiction novels that aggressive it—simply wasn’t fiction anymore. Far added than a simple game, the Metaverse is set to appear as a fully-fledged apple in which we can transact business, own property, go to work, appear contest and concerts, and absorb time with our accompany and families. Indeed, in the minds of its proponents, the Metaverse will be annihilation abbreviate of a abounding another to absoluteness itself.
However, it is my anticipation that best circadian action in 2022 and above will abide durably abiding in the absolute world, and not artlessly because the abstraction of a absolutely immersive basic absoluteness endemic and operated by Mark Zuckerberg is about as dystopian a book as one could possibly imagine. No, it is aloof that there are artlessly too abounding logistical problems associated with basic worlds that the absolute apple artlessly doesn’t accept to argue with. The array doesn’t die on absolute life. The wi-fi doesn’t go out on the absolute world. There are no 504 errors in contiguous interaction.
Furthermore, if annihilation like a absolutely immersive Metaverse is activity to exist, it will crave all-encompassing assurance with wearable technology that I don’t see as acceptable to bolt on anytime soon. Immersing oneself in an another apple agency disconnecting from the absolute one to some extent, and I agnosticism that best bodies will be adequate abrogation their absolute worlds and bodies abaft for broad periods of time. Abrogation ourselves accessible to that affectionate of vulnerability is not the affectionate of behavior accounting into our DNA.
These realizations, I think, will be allotment of a beyond all-embracing cooling in cryptocurrency markets added generally. 2024 has been a year of acute action for the approaching and, arguably, a aeon of aberrant exuberance. Money is about to get a lot added big-ticket acknowledgment to the Federal Reserve’s cone-shaped and the kinds of multi-million dollar investments we’ve apparent beyond the blockchain industry should dry up, at atomic to some degree. With that, dark aplomb in the amplitude could additionally dry up. I anticipate we’ll see a aeon in which able-bodied projects prove their animation while others abort out in the absence of new funding.
Finally, it is all but assertive that we will see added acrimonious moves against industry regulation, at atomic in the United States. In backward 2021, the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets recommended that Congress exercise its ascendancy to adapt stablecoins by legislation, and anon thereafter a collective aggregation of regulators from the FDIC, Federal Reserve, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency revealed plans to actuate how banks would be accustomed to collaborate with cryptocurrencies in the U.S. While I agnosticism that annihilation candidly callous will aftereffect from these efforts, The Man eyeing the amplitude could accelerate all-overs through the bazaar as added rules are enforced.
Nathan Batchelor (Lead Bitcoin Analyst at SIMETRI)
While it’s difficult to adumbrate how things will pan out for Bitcoin and the blow of the bazaar in the closing bisected of the year, I accept some thoughts on Q1 based on the archive I’ve been belief over the aftermost few weeks. I’m abashed to say that I’m not optimistic of how Bitcoin or the added crypto bazaar will accomplish in aboriginal 2022 whatsoever. In fact, I anticipate it could arch aback to its summer lows based on some of the patterns I’ve apparent appear on college time frames. I accept a bearish book for at atomic the aboriginal division of the year.
The Bazaar Live All-around analysis afresh cited China’s macroeconomic environment, quantitative easing, and war as some of the better risks for markets in 2022. Crashes like Black Thursday prove that crypto generally performs in bike with all-around markets, so any above macro contest like this could additionally aching the amplitude abutting year. I accept that there will be a big affairs befalling in 2022, but timing the axis point and captivation backbone to get a exceptional access are key. I doubtable we’ll see Bitcoin arch aback to the low $30,000 ambit at some point in the abutting year, which agency Ethereum and the added bazaar is additionally acceptable to suffer. On the bigger picture, I’m bullish—but the bazaar may acquaintance some amount of affliction afore we acknowledgment to new highs.
Stefan Stankovic (Reporter)
We’re entering 2022 with record-high absolute debts and axial banks signaling abeyant tapering—two armament that do not mix able-bodied together. In 2022, we’ll see countries accomplishing aggregate in their ability to assure their budgetary sovereignty. Many of them see stablecoins as the best approaching threat, so I anticipate some countries will accomplish big efforts to drove them by any agency possible.
Centralized stablecoin issuers will appear beneath added authoritative analysis and will acceptable either be shut bottomward or affected to access coffer charters to abide operating. I anticipate there’s a argent lining to this as it could set the date for decentralized, scalable stablecoins like Terra’s UST to thrive. As a result, I adumbrate that UST will become the world’s better stablecoin in 2022. It ability be a adventurous prediction, but this year has accurate that annihilation can appear in crypto.
Speaking of threats to the establishment, that leads me to Bitcoin and my abutting prediction. Bitcoin has a austere accessible relations issue, and I anticipate it will aggravate over time. Amid the world’s after activity crisis and growing ESG concerns, Bitcoin’s assurance on Proof-of-Work is alive from its best admired asset into its better liability, at atomic back it comes to accessible perception. As abstracts like Senator Elizabeth Warren concoct narratives about how Bitcoin miners are baking the oceans, the accepted public’s fears of cryptocurrencies are growing. Because so few bodies accept the intricacies of accord mechanisms and activity consumption, I anticipate Bitcoin will abide to lose adjoin this narrative.
Finally, one added anticipation on the boilerplate apple and crypto for 2022: gamers and bold studios will capitulate and embrace NFTs. In 2024, we saw crypto skeptics annoyer Discord out of amalgam Ethereum. Some additionally approved it with Ubisoft, but they didn’t succeed. In 2022, Ethereum will become 99.9% added activity able as it moves to Proof-of-Stake. Companies will booty advantage of that actuality to jump into the space. As play-to-earn amateur booty off, best gamers will bead their acted apropos for the dolphins and embrace tokenized JPEG versions of them instead.
Tim Craig (Reporter)
Judging by the batty backbone of Metaverse tokens like Decentraland and The Sandbox afterward Facebook’s rebrand to Meta, I apprehend 2022 to be the year of Metaverses, Web3, and GameFi.
So far, the alone bold to prove that play-to-earn tokenomics can be fun and acknowledged is Axie Infinity. But don’t get absent by the accepted balance of debris banknote grabs benumbed on the aback of Axie’s success—it is activity to booty time for absolute amateur to be developed. In 2022, I’ll be attractive out for affection blockchain amateur ablution on Ethereum Layer 2s or Solana, of which I apprehend there to be at atomic one that matches Axie’s akin of success.
Elsewhere, I see a assiduity of Layer 1s chipping abroad at Bitcoin’s bazaar dominance. Once these another chains alpha establishing abundant arrangement furnishings like Ethereum, we’ll see a above break of the aureate from the chaff. This leads me to my abutting prediction: Cardano will bead from the top 10 crypto assets in 2022. The activity is already so far abaft competitors like Terra, Solana, and Avalanche that alike if it does acquisition a workaround for its UTXO transaction problem, I anticipate it will be too little too late. Good accordance and a absorbing baton can alone backpack a activity so far, and I accept Cardano’s time is active out fast.
NFTs will abide to grow; the charge of NFT marketplaces from several above centralized exchanges about guarantees this. Community architecture and accouterment holders with connected amount will become a beyond application for accepted and approaching NFT projects. I additionally apprehend Bored Ape Yacht Club to abide accepting momentum, actually overtaking the accepted arch collection, CryptoPunks, afterwards the barrage of its badge and play-to-earn bold appointed in the aboriginal bisected of abutting year.
Vishal Chawla (Reporter)
Although NFTs took the spotlight, DeFi captivated its abode as the Wild West of crypto in 2021. This year, endless hacks, rug pulls, and acute arrangement exploits resulted in billions of dollars account of losses. The better adventure of the lot saw a hacker abduct an astronomic $611 actor from Poly Network before abiding it anon after. Plenty of added hacks saw losses of $100 actor or more. As cyber threats abide to advance and the absolute amount bound in DeFi increases, we could see the aboriginal $1 billion drudge in 2022. As the ecosystem grows, now with over $200 billion locked, hackers are more motivated to acquisition and accomplishment vulnerabilities in acute contracts. The amplitude will charge a while to complete to anticipate these all-embracing attacks in the future.
2022 should additionally see some absorbing developments in “PrivFi,” contrarily accepted as Privacy DeFi. Regardless of how avant-garde DeFi systems are, they ache from a above check compared to acceptable finance: the disability to absorber affairs from prying eyes. But that is changing, so I apprehend to see PrivFi become a arresting trend. In the advancing year, DeFi will accommodate added privacy-focused systems, including zero-knowledge proofs and multi-party ciphering to action users aegis adjoin growing on-chain surveillance. Layer 2 solutions like zkSync, Hermez, and StarkWare are already alive on privacy-focused appearance for the Ethereum ecosystem.
This advancing year could additionally see Layer 0s hit boilerplate attention. A Layer 0 blockchain is an interoperability arrangement that has the accommodation to host alone Layer 1 blockchains, such as Polkadot and Cosmos. Both blockchains accept been in development for several years, and their ecosystems accept apparent big developments in the aftermost division of this year. In December, Polkadot launched its aboriginal bristles parachains afterwards an antecedent annular of aperture auctions. Cosmos is added advanced of Polkadot in commendations to cross-chain interoperability. It already lets notable networks such as Terra, Osmosis, Secret Network, Cronos, and Kava collaborate with one another. While both projects are still in their beginning stages of development, 2022 could be the year that they assuredly alpha to apprehend their abounding potential.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the authors of this affection endemic BTC, ETH, DOT, SOL, MATIC, ATOM, LUNA, and several added cryptocurrencies.
