2022 Crypto Forecast

There is perhaps nothing in this world as pointless as making predictions for the blockchain business. Prognoses that “BTC will reach $ 100,000 by the end of … 2018 … 2019 … 2020 … 2021” seem unending. So we will try to simply point to a few of the most important things to look forward to in 2022 as a guide for our readers.

1. Bitcoin will retain its role as the main cryptocurrency

“Digital gold” is called that for a reason: no matter what happens in the financial market, the first cryptocurrency maintains its significance. Over the past year, BTC rose in price by more than 150%, and now, from the height of its trillion-dollar capitalization, it is graciously looking at all the fuss around altcoins and crypto trends. That, despite the BTC dominance index falling from 70% to 40% last year.

Bitcoin will continue its growth, assure the analysts, and there are many reasons for their confidence:

– BTC shortage: 90% of all cryptocoins have already been mined, and it is very difficult to obtain the rest. The resulting deficit leads to the value increase.

– Growing inflation of fiat currencies: Over the past two years, the world’s central banks have by far surpassed all previous records for printing money, so rapid depreciation comes as no surprise. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has a fixed amount of 21 million coins, which states and central banks cannot change, thus becoming increasingly reliable insurance against inflation.

– Growing mass crypto adoption in the world: BTC is usually the first cryptocurrency that a person or company buys. First – as an investment asset, then – as a means of payment.

– Institutional adoption. Crypto assets are becoming available to large institutional investors – pension and insurance funds, trust companies, etc. Regulators worldwide are forced to greenlight exchange-traded funds (ETFs) – major players who will buy large amounts of BTC, thereby accelerating the price growth.

– The global trend towards legalization: In 2021, El Salvador and Cuba fully legalized Bitcoin as a means of payment. Other countries, primarily in Latin America and Africa, are sure to follow.

2. Ethereum in crisis and the rise of altcoins

The second most important cryptocurrency entered 2022 in a pre-crisis condition. The Ethereum platform charges an astronomical gas fee, often higher than the transferred amount itself, rendering DeFi services on the ETH blockchain utterly useless. Another issue is scalability, and together, they cause the mass migration of users to alternative platforms.

Level 2 solutions (L2) cannot deal with the problem fundamentally, and the transition to Ethereum 2.0 on the PoS algorithm is still being postponed. As a result, Vitalik Buterin’s brainchild is losing ground to other L1s such as Solana and Polkadot. ETH desperately needs a revolution by mid-2022, or the outpouring of projects to other networks and the acceleration of the bitcoin flow in DeFi will not leave Ethereum any chance.

Last year, Ethereum’s strongest competitor was Solana, which is many times faster and can process 50,000 transactions per second. In 2021 it showed a 100-fold growth, and there is no apparent reason for it to lose pace in 2022.

In turn, Polkadot successfully contends with Ethereum thanks to the effective deployment of parachain auctions. Numerous major projects are launching on the platform in the near future, meaning users will buy and block even more DOT.

3. GameFi

CoinList recently conducted a community survey on what projects members would like to see on the platform in 2022. In the first place were games with 56.5% of the vote. DeFi (52.1%) and NFT (41.6%) projects took second and third. Next were things like L1/L2 (31.4%), infrastructure (28.3%), social tokens (22.8%), and management (16.2%).

In the second half of 2021, we saw Play To Earn games definitively break all records in terms of popularity. The leader, Axie Infinity, now has about 300,000 players, and the most prominent blockchain game developer, Animoca Brands, has quintupled its income in just two months.

Today, it is clear that the relationship between DeFi and games will only deepen going forward, increasingly attracting investors to large new gaming platforms.

4. Metaverses + NFT

The NFT trend is hardly new, although, in 2021, the segment broke all previous records. However, in 2022, the technology will be in even greater demand due to metaverses – a new crazy trend set by none other than Mark Zuckerberg.

Most users have already decided on the two areas for NFT implementation in 2022 – metaverses and gaming. Actually, the second option also involves metaverses since NFT games are built on virtual worlds. Only 7% of owners plan to use NFTs as social network profile pictures, 5.7% for event participation, and 4.7% for membership in professional communities.

5. Decentralized finance growth

2022 won’t be a year of game-changing breakthroughs for DeFi, rather that of steady growth. This year, decentralized finance will gain resources, become known to a much wider range of users, and welcome an influx of professional financiers who see a huge window of opportunity here.

The main takeaway is that we are slowly abandoning the economic structure controlled by large monopolists and government agencies and creating a new financial ecosystem belonging to the entire community. With the help of tokens, users will develop, transform and manage them.