By Roy Katsiri 

The cryptocurrency market reached new heights in 2021, according to Investing.com. The market’s negative trends in the final two months can be overcome by investors, traders, and platform operators. However, there are many reasons for optimism. 

As usual, cryptocurrencies experienced volatility over the past year. Many of the most popular cryptocurrencies saw their value drop by as much as 30% in the last 2 months. Overall, however, investors and traders saw positive returns on the crypto market in 2021, with November hitting new highs. 

The largest and most popular cryptocurrency on the market is also celebrating a new year. Monday January 3 marks the 13th Anniversary of Bitcoin’s first block (“Genesis Block”), when the first 50 Bitcoins were registered. 

The Crypto Market’s Key Events

Last year was full of drama for the cryptocurrency market, with prominent events: 

Tesla Motors, the leader in electric vehicles, made an announcement in February 2021 about investing $ 1.5 billion in Bitcoin. It was led by Elon Musk. 

A record was set in March for the highest-value NFT (nonfungible token) transaction: Beeple, an American artist, owned a collection of 5,000 digital pieces by Mike Winkelmann. Christie’s Auction House sold the NFT for over $69 million. This collage is called “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” and has been one of the most valuable works of art ever sold at auction. 

Coinbase (NASDAQ) was named the first cryptocurrency exchange that could be traded on Wall Street. The company’s shares were directly listed to the Nasdaq and the stock closed its first trading day valued at $85 billion. Coinbase was the first public cryptocurrency exchange to be listed on Wall Street. However, the company finished the year with an enterprise value $51.7B. 

The cryptocurrency ”, which was launched as a joke about Bitcoin in 2013, broke the all-time price record with a more than 12,000% increase in its value since May 2013. Dogecoin’s rally was mainly attributed to Elon Musk’s demonstrated support of the currency, who announced in May that Dogecoin would be used to fund SpaceX’s space mission, which would launch the Doge-1 satellite to the moon in early 2022. Dogecoin’s price dropped in the second quarter of 2018, closing at $0.17. This is still 3.650% more than it was at the beginning. 

A September announcement by the Chinese government that all cryptocurrency mining or trading activity in China was illegal made a grave threat to the industry.

On the contrary, US regulators gave the crypto market significant support in October when Wall Street trading began with ProShares’ BITO fund based upon Bitcoin futures. 

A few weeks later on November 10, Bitcoin’s price soared to an unprecedented high. This brought almost all of the crypto markets with it. 

Here are the key stats about the crypto market in 2021

What made 2021 an extraordinary year for crypto markets? To illustrate, here are some highlights broken down by numbers:

$2.18 TrillionThis was the value of crypto currency market at year end, with 16,238 different types. That number will only continue to rise, according to CoinMarketCap statistics. Market started in 2021 at $760 billion. This is a nearly 187% increase. Year-end value for the year is just 27% less than November 10, when it reached a record $3 trillion. Bitcoin was responsible for 40% of this year-end total value.

$68,789– On November 10, 2021, Bitcoin reached its all-time highest price. The price of Bitcoin has dropped 29% in just two months from its peak. It ended 2018 at $46,300. Even though Bitcoin has fallen from its peak, it is now about 60% lower than the price at the beginning 2021. At the close of 2018, Bitcoin’s total market value was $876 billion.

$4,891– On November 16, the record-breaking price for Ether (the currency used by the Etherum blockchain platform) was set. Ether has fallen 25% since that time. Even though it wasn’t at its peak, Ether was still about 400% more expensive than the price of Ether at December 2021. At the close of 2018, the price of Ether represented a market value of $438 billion for the platform, which is about 20% of total crypto market value. 

$15.3 billion– All Bitcoin miners’ estimated annual revenue. The Block published a recently completed study that estimates that Bitcoin miners have seen their total revenue increase by 20% in the past year, compared to 2020’s revenues. The assumption is that miners sell the cryptocurrency they have mined and then convert it into fiat currency to pay their expenses. But, miners may prefer to retain the coins that they have mined. 

$25.1 billionEstimated volume of capital raises by the crypto industry in 2021. This sum is more than 1700 capital raises that were made in 2017 by technology startups or crypto startups, according to The Block. 

Surplus of $13 billionThe Block’s annual report shows the total volume of NFTs trading in 2021. This figure represents a dramatic jump of 42.988% in trading volume when compared with the cumulative turnovers of just more than $33 million for 2020. It also revealed that 88% of the total 2021 trading volume in NFTs was concentrated in OpenSea’s online trading area, accounting for more than $12.5 million in trading volume. 

There are more than 32 trillionThis shows the combined trading volume of Bitcoin and Ethereum futures. This trading volume represents a 33% increase in trading volumes over 2020 (which saw an average of $7 trillion). May 2021 saw the highest monthly volume of futures trades in the market, with more than $4 trillion. Binance was the biggest trading platform on the market for futures contract contracts on Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

There are more than 14 trillionThis number is the annual cumulative volume of cryptocurrency reported by centralized cryptos in 2021. This number represents an increase of 689% compared to 2020’s trading volume which was over $1.8 trillion. Comparable to centralized exchanges where the majority of trading is done in cryptocurrency markets, distributed crypto exchanges have a higher cumulative trading volume than centralized ones (DEX).

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