Between 2020 and 2021, the number of encrypted wallets will grow at a rate of about 20 million per year, from about 80 million today. This means that the number of people involved in the crypto space has doubled in just two years. This data has exceeded 1% of the entire earth's population. In a survey of investors initiated by CNBC, more than 10% of investors indicated that they participated in the investment of encrypted assets. Therefore, encrypted assets have become another popular investment after real estate, stocks, mutual funds and bonds. Investment varieties.

Next, we review the development of the encryption industry in 2021 from seven perspectives:

-NFT Mania: From Word of the Year to Mainstream Adoption

-Industry expert forecast

-Large financial institutions turn to the crypto industry

-Crypto Unicorns

-Crypto and sports fusion

-Traditional companies turn to the crypto industry

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NFT Mania: From Word of the Year to Mainstream Adoption

NFT is the Corinthian Dictionary's 2021 Word of the Year, and dictionary experts believe that the acronym representing Non-Fungible Token is more representative of this year's world mainstream than any recently popular vocabulary.

Just as the development of the NFT field in 2021, industry players expect the adoption of NFT to accelerate in 2022.

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Google searches for "NFT" soar

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Picture: Comparison of searches for "NFT" and "encryption" worldwide

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Image: Search volume for 'NFT' vs 'crypto' in Japan

Iconic Moments of 2021

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Image: The First 5000 Days showcase

Shortly after Beeple sold NFT at a sky-high price, Sotheby's, another established auction house, followed suit and held an auction themed on encrypted artists.

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BAYC does not take the usual path

The Bored Ape (BAYC) series, which debuted in April last year, is undoubtedly one of the most popular NFTs on the market because it provides users with a wealth of choices and diverse characteristics. In this series, each ape's Traits can be algorithmically randomly generated, so each ape has a unique background style, clothing, earrings, eyes, mouth and fur. This undoubtedly meets the needs of people today to show their individuality. Celebrities such as Jimmy Fallon, NBA player Stephen Curry, and billionaire investor Mark Cuban are also holders of Boring Ape NFT.

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big brand participation

Adidas

According to InftNews, the most important mainstream cross-border cooperation so far is Adidas' cooperation with BAYC, Gmoney and PUNKS Comics. In order to discuss plans with new partners, Adidas also launched a new Twitter account "Adidas Originals", and Has purchased BAYC #8774 as their profile picture.

The purpose of this move, of course, is to chase the metaverse craze. Not long after, Adidas announced the exploration of the metaverse on Adidas Originals, and to explain their idea to users, they also released a short video depicting the Boring Ape held by Adidas and its partners seamlessly crossing the sky and entering the metaverse screen.

Ubisoft

Ubisoft became the first game developer to apply NFT to its own 3A masterpiece. In December 2021, Ubisoft announced the launch of a digital platform called Quartz on the Tezos blockchain, allowing players to obtain in-game NFTs. The first NFT is an in-game item in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, which players can claim for free after reaching levels and playing time in the limited-time open beta.

But while Ubisoft's entry brought NFTs into the mainstream world, and they were free to get, their efforts were not well-received. In fact, their YouTube video received more than 20,000 “dislikes” within the first hour, and the company was forced to take the video down after protests from users on its social media about “NFT energy consumption.” For now, it remains to be seen whether Ubisoft will go ahead with its plans.

This also reflects that NFT still needs a lot of education to be accepted and adopted by a wider mainstream audience.

Of course, Ubisoft's efforts don't stop there. Ubisoft's blockchain technology director once revealed that the digital platform is only the first step, and he wants to see how players interact with NFT. The popular "Play-to-Earn" and blockchain games in 2021 are also in their consideration.

Why enter the NFT field? The director means a lot: the move to decentralization means that Ubisoft will give players more control, and when game developers put players at the center, the blockchain will really change the game. Only in this way can players have endless possibilities for the game world. For example, game items will no longer be bound in a single game world, and the real interconnection between game worlds can be realized from a technical level, and this will also open the door to the real "Metaverse", which is Ubisoft's ultimate goal .

In addition to the above list, Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and other companies have launched their own NFT.

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Industry experts predict

Looking at the development of the encryption industry through a traditional perspective, you can see the current development status and future trends.

André Neves, CEO of Zebedee, believes: "Mass adoption is definitely increasing, especially as Bitcoin has reached a level of legitimacy in the eyes of investors, banks, companies and some countries. Such attention is bound to arouse public interest. I I think the key to unlocking the next stage of "mainstreaming" lies in Bitcoin, which provides an easy use case and experience for users looking to use crypto assets for the first time. "

Michael Kong, CEO of the Fantom Foundation, believes: “Mass adoption has been going on for several years. Over time, we see crypto assets becoming more and more mainstream. For example, some large pension funds and Retirement funds have started investing in this market, which has never happened before. As more mainstream companies and governments get involved, we will continue to see more examples of crypto asset adoption.”

Larry Pang, Director of Business Development at IoTeX, said: "In the life cycle of technology applications, the blockchain and encryption fields have passed the 'innovator' stage and are now in the 'early adopter' stage. In 2021, we have seen Seeing household names such as Visa, Facebook, and Softbank establishing, adopting, and investing in the crypto space legitimizes the technology and, more importantly, gives investors the confidence to explore this budding industry."

Don Basile, CEO of Roman DBDR, noted, “Tesla, Square, and MicroStrategy all have Bitcoin on their balance sheets. Nothing more mainstream than that.”

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Large Financial Institutions Turn to Crypto Sector

Citibank

Citibank

Large multinational bank - Citibank is one of the financial institutions that are increasingly interested in crypto assets. In May, the bank said it was considering launching services that support crypto assets after receiving a flood of requests from clients. In late August, the bank also revealed that it was considering offering bitcoin futures to some institutional clients.

Citibank has put forward its views many times throughout 2021. For example, it believes that regardless of whether encrypted assets will disrupt the current payment system, in addition to being increasingly adopted as a store of value, it is still in the payment base. Facilities, processing and accounting spark new thinking. Now, however, large corporations and other institutions need to consider the diversity of their portfolios.

Bank of America

Second only to JPMorgan Chase and the second largest commercial bank in the United States-Bank of America established an encryption research team in July 2021, believing that encrypted assets are too large to be ignored, and they are forming an ever-growing ecosystem, from DeFi to NFT to to GameFi. More and more major banks are becoming more open to the idea of ​​incorporating crypto assets into their business models.

DBS Bank

DBS Bank

Singapore-based DBS Bank - Southeast Asia's largest lender - has become one of the first traditional banks in the region to launch a digital exchange. Currently, the bank’s crypto trading service is live, offering four fiat currencies (SGD, USD, HKD, and JPY) and four cryptoassets — Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Spot trades between cash (BCH) and Ripple (XRP).

As DBS manages more and more crypto assets in custody in 2021, the bank will continue to expand its scale.

Fidelity, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Standard Chartered Bank will also more or less intersect with the encryption world in 2021, so I won’t introduce them one by one here.

Top U.S. Banks Attract Crypto Talent

Research firm Revelio Labs analyzed 287 crypto-related job postings on professional networking site LinkedIn from Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Fidelity, and JPMorgan Chase and found that these four firms are the top employers of crypto talent. In addition, Revelio also concluded that the average salary of crypto talents is 9% higher than that of bank employees.

Additionally, LinkedIn reports that job listings related to crypto and blockchain have jumped 615% since August 2020.

Encryption is being accepted by the traditional asset system

With the listing of the encrypted exchange Coinbase as a milestone, the traditional financial system is gradually accepting the integration of encrypted finance. Robinhood, an online celebrity brokerage, also regards encrypted trading as a new growth point for the company.

More and more traditional financial professionals are joining encryption companies, such as former SEC chairman Jay Clayton joining encryption custody company Fireblocks as an advisor; former Goldman Sachs government affairs director Faryar Shirzad joining Coinbase; former Bridgewater chief financial officer John Dalby joining encryption investment company NYDIG .

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Crypto Unicorns

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Crypto and Sports Fusion

As one of the hottest NBA stars today, Stephen Curry (Stephen Curry) has a large number of fans around the world. On September 8, 2021, after purchasing the Boring Ape NFT with 55 Ethereum as his avatar on social media, he reached a cooperation with the encryption exchange FTX and became FTX's global ambassador and shareholder.

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Image: NFT display of "The Messiverse" series

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In pictures: Miami Heat arena rebranded as FTX Arena

From this point of view, FTX is vigorously deploying the sports world, so that it has a very high degree of exposure.

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Accept Crypto Payments

Throughout 2021, numerous celebrities, groups, organizations, and companies have announced acceptance of cryptoasset payments.

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Image: Miami Mayor Francis Suarez speaks at <Bitcoin: 2021 Conference>

The most influential company is electric car manufacturer Tesla, which accepted Bitcoin payments for a short period of time in 2021; followed by movie theater giant AMC, which officially accepted BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC and Doge in November 2021. as a payment method. The company is currently exploring adding SHIB to the payment ranks.

Paypal and Visa

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Image: Paypal-UK’s crypto transaction service via CNBC

Given that PayPal has 377 million users worldwide, this is a valuable addition to the crypto industry. The payments company has been making a big push to enter the crypto industry. Interestingly, in 2022 its roots are diversifying.

PayPal has confirmed that it will launch its own stablecoin, tentatively called PayPal Coin. The internal development of the stablecoin was first spotted in the source code of Paypal's iPhone app by developer Steve Moser.

Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s senior vice president of encryption and digital currencies, confirmed in an interview:

“We are exploring a stablecoin; we will of course work closely with the relevant regulators if we seek to move forward.”

Another payment giant, Visa, is going in a different direction than Paypal. In order to connect with the encryption industry, Visa has developed a strong strategy, hoping to build a bridge between traditional business and encrypted assets.

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Image: Exclusive encrypted credit card launched by Visa and Binance

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Square（Block）

Square began as a traditional payments processor, but the company has increasingly turned to blockchain and bitcoin. In December 2021, Square, led by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, announced that it would change the company's legal name to Block. As the name suggests, blockchain was one of the reasons for the change.

Block currently covers multiple businesses, including its payment app Cash App, its crypto research arm, Tidal music service and its decentralized bitcoin exchange TBD.

It is worth mentioning that the company has also invested heavily in Bitcoin, owning more than 8,000 Bitcoins.

Gamestop

GameStop is an American video game, electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. In early 2021, its stock price soared from $20 to more than $400 after retail traders on Reddit jointly planned a short confrontation, so it became the focus of the world's attention.

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Image: GameStop builds NFT platform

Phosus

Phosus is an AI expert in the field of image entertainment. Its AI-powered image enhancement tools are widely used. At present, the company has officially entered the encryption industry, focusing on NFT and blockchain games.

The much-followed Samurai Doge on Twitter is the work of this company. Thanks to its technical advantages in images, Samurai Doge issued 5,000 unique 3D NFTs. Each NFT comes with a beautiful background, beautifully crafted armor, cool weapons and banners; some even have cute accessories, decorations. These 3D NFTs could eventually be used in an augmented reality (AR) application. Second, users can also try to adapt metadata (that is, the characteristics of these NFTs), as long as they are compatible.

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cooperate

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Bitcoin futures ETF approved for listing

Many hoped that 2021 would be the year of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and in some ways it did. Although the crypto industry failed to successfully advance a spot bitcoin ETF through the SEC in 2021, it did pass several ETFs based on futures products.

Back in August, at an event, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler commented on the Bitcoin ETF: In view of the important protection measures such as the Investment Company Act and the Federal Securities Act, I am very much looking forward to the staff’s interest in Bitcoin. Futures ETF applications will be reviewed, especially if those applications are limited to Bitcoin futures traded on the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange).

From this moment on, the race was on and many companies started applying for futures-based Bitcoin ETFs.

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Image: ProShares Bitcoin Futures ETF had second-highest first-day trading volume ever

Summarize

Summarize

We can use "product innovation" to accurately describe the beginning of the development of the crypto market, and this stage has spawned some eye-catching applications, such as DeFi, NFT and blockchain games. Blockchain could also bring innovations to a wider range of industries, from tracking the routing of shipping containers to improving the integrity of medical records. The “mainstreaming” of blockchain applications and cryptoassets marks the next phase of the technology.

What exactly does mainstream mean? To quote a sentence from the English dictionary Vocabulary, it is: "It describes what is 'normal' in the eyes of most people in society. Mainstream is common."

One important challenge that remains on the crypto industry’s path toward mainstreaming is a credible, global regulatory framework, and once these challenges are overcome, a glorious era for the crypto industry will come.

According to the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions" issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.

risk warning:

According to the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions" issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.