The most important events and news in Crypto and Defi from 2021
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This is for sure the most important piece of news of 2021. No further comment is needed. Tesla buying BitcoinThis is probably one of the most significant Crypto-related events in 2021. Early in 2021, Bitcoin appeared on the financial statement of Tesla. The BTC was acquired earlier in 2020. Elon Musk was fast enough to confirm that this was correct. A wild rollercoaster of events stirred the community like a tsunami followed. First, Tesla started accepting Bitcoin. After that, Elon Musk decided to revert this because of environmental issues. What followed next could not be predicted by anyone - Elon going all in Dogecoin and dropping Bitcoin support for a meme coin. Coinbase going public |
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One of the first crypto companies to go public was Coinbase. The initial trading price for the COIN stock, at $381, was an impressive 52% above the reference price of $250 a share published a day earlier by Nasdaq. Today, Coinbase still trades at roughly IPO price, so only time will show us how investors will price the stock. More companies adding bitcoin to their balance sheetsAfter Tesla bought Bitcoin, there were plenty of speculations of who will be the next company to do so. Today we know that more than 27 public companies, including Square, Microstrategy, Coinbase, Galaxy and Nexon, own more than 217000 Bitcoins. El Salvador legalizing bitcoin as a legal tender |
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Bitcoin is now officially a legal tender in El Salvador, three months after the Bitcoin Law passed the country’s legislature. Bitcoin is now on equal footing with the US dollar, circulating throughout the country since 2001. In June, El Salvador President announced that bitcoin would become legal tender, making his country the first. Also, no capital gains taxes for bitcoin holders were reported subsequently. El Salvador also purchased Bitcoin multiple times as an investment. First ETH upgrade on the way to proof-of-stakeEthereum’s London upgrade in early August is part of a series of changes to the popular layer 1 platform that will significantly change its structure by moving from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. The goal is to speed up the network and make it less energy-intensive and less expensive to use. The London upgrade also reduced the supply of the Ether token, making it a deflationary cryptocurrency. US Bitcoin ETFIn October, the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy exchange-traded fund — which tracks futures of the digital coin. This debut has finally closed year-long speculation if the SEC will ever support a BTC ETF. Defi tops $100bn TVLIn the summer of 2021, DeFi topped $100bn Total Value Locked for the first time. Today, DeFi has matured and protocols like Curve, Aave, Uniswap and Sushiswap support billions of trading volume. |
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Multiple Crypto-Related UnicornsFunding in Crypto has exploded with more and more VCs entering the market. At the end of 2021, we now have numerous Crypto Unicorns in multiple countries - Amber Group, Bitso, Blockchain.com, Blockstream, BlockFi, CoinList, CoinSwitch Kuber, ConsenSys, Figure Technologies, Fireblocks, OpenSea, 2TM and others all joined this exclusive list. This is a solid sign that our industry is maturing. China Bans Bitcoin (for real this time)China banning Bitcoin has become somehow a running gag in our community. Every year for the past 5 years, we have seen announcements that China will ban cryptocurrencies. This year, it actually happened - Bitcoin mining is now illegal in China and although this caused a slight drop in the hashrate, the Bitcoin network quickly recovered. In the end, this was a good development for Bitcoin, as more countries added to the hashrate, making the network more decentralized and secure. Worth mentioning…An NFT sold for $69.3 million - wow! The Meme Coins explosion - Shiba Inu and DogeCoin hitting $20bn Market Cap each! Worth a read on what happened… |
