This week, major cryptocurrencies suffered a massive drop as the broader market fell back following the confirmation of plans to raise interest rates. Minutes from the FOMC meeting hinted that the US Federal Reserve was considering a possible rate hike in March.
The major crypto assets (not including the Tether and USD Coin stables) are down in double figures in the last 7 days. Solana (SOL), Ethereum (ETH), and Binance Coin (BNB) lead the way in losses with declines of 19.47%, 13.97%, and 13.15%, respectively, at the time of writing. The leading cryptocurrency is also trading in the red, falling 12.01% in the last 7 days.
Here’s a look at the top off-market headlines during the first week of the year.
Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Bets NFTs Are Bigger Than Bitcoin
Popular Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary recently said that he is optimistic that NFTs will grow to be much larger than Bitcoin. Speaking during a recent installment of the Capital Connection program, I said to CNBC that NFTs could become a much more fluid market, mainly due to the robustness of their use cases.
NFTs have established themselves as suitable instruments to attract investment opportunities. These unique tokens allow users to tokenize items and prove ownership of physical assets such as real estate, flashy cars, or expensive watches.
However, the millionaire investor and TV show host said he’s making his investment bet on ” both sides of that equation. “ O’Leary previously had a combative approach to Bitcoin. There was labeled the asset as ‘ trash ‘in May 2019, but he seemed to have changed his mind in recent days.
Now he considers it a good hedge against inflation and is exploring it as an escape from distressed assets like real estate. O’Leary also insisted on the importance of regulation as crypto evolves, a comment that comes during a period when the US and other nations are debunking the whole idea of what crypto regulations mean.
Crypto Market Cap Could Hit $ 250 Trillion By 2030, Says Raoul Pal
Former Goldman Sachs fund manager Raoul Pal believes that Bitcoin’s market capitalization can grow roughly a hundred times its current value, which stands at $ 2.2 trillion. Speaking to the podcast Bankless Brazil on the last day of 2021, Pal said projected growth is feasible if the asset continues on its current path.
In his argument, Pal cited the current levels of other markets, including bonds and real estate, stating that they have a market capitalization that ranges between $ 250 and 350 trillion. He predicted that cryptocurrencies would become the first asset to achieve such projected growth in the shortest time ever.
The figures projected by the CEO of Real Vision were arrived at after extrapolating the current figures so that by 2030 there will be $ 3.5 billion users. On regulation, O’Leary argued that smaller altcoins run the risk of suffering the most adverse effects compared to more established cryptocurrencies.
Ethereum is dominant in development, but others are closing in
According to a report of Posted Wednesday by cryptocurrency investment firm Electric Capital, Ethereum enjoyed the largest share of development in 2021 on a top-five list, including Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana, and Bitcoin.
After reviewing more than 500,000 code repositories and 160 million code commits that qualify as code changes and updates, Electric Capital found more than 18,400 active open source developers across all chains every month.
Of this number, the Ethereum ecosystem enjoyed 4,000 monthly developers compared to 680 for Bitcoin. The report noted that Polkadot had around 1,500, while Solana and Cosmos are supported by roughly 1,000 developers each.
Electric Capital noted that other altcoin ecosystems had seen faster growth than Ethereum during its emergence. At the same time in history as Ethereum, such ecosystems, including NEAR, Polkadot, Solana Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Avalanche, and Terra, are doing better.
However, even with the competitive position of minor altcoins, Ethereum still dominates massively in development. Its ecosystem includes massive dApps, protocols, and network tools that make it at least 2.8 times larger than the nearest Polkadot.
Former CFTC Chairman Criticizes Biden Administration’s Approach to Crypto Regulation
Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Chris Giancarlo has explained his position that the Biden administration’s approach to regulating cryptocurrencies is ” very defensive and reactionary. “
Giancarlo questioned President Biden’s tactics on a stablecoin report released last year. The report, he explained, showed that President Biden was more concerned about what could go wrong rather than focusing on the benefits if the ” innovation is well channeled. “
He insisted that the United States should act quickly so as not to be left behind by the next wave of the Internet and the evolution of financial systems. The former regulator also advocated for clarity on the regulation of private cryptocurrencies. He proposed that a new department be created under the joint jurisdiction of the Consumer Financial Protection Office and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He also suggested that the crypto working group he co-founded should be considered to create the proposed office that would be managed jointly but given the independence of finance and authorization.
In recent days, Giancarlo has supported research and development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in collaboration with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston to develop open-source code that could form the basis of the digital dollar.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried bullish on regulatory clarity in 2022
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried spoke with Bloomberg in an interview posted Tuesday morning. He gave his opinion on various matters including NFTs, the metaverse, the regulatory scene, crypto gaming, and the FTX brand’s marketing plans.
The MIT graduate said he is optimistic and anticipates that regulators around the world will progressively establish regulatory requirements around cryptocurrencies in the coming days. Bankman-Fried said that once the regulations are in place, there will be a significant influx of investors and a subsequent rise in the price of Bitcoin.
On the broader crypto landscape, the FTX CEO said that he expects stablecoins to make a breakthrough, yet still predicts more involvement from regulators, the CFTC, and the SEC.
In addition, he spoke about the growth of NFTs and, with it, the appearance of the metaverse. In particular, he cited the transformation of Facebook to Meta as a move that will catalyze growth in this space. He also argued that the NFT activity we are seeing today would slow down for a while before major players enter the game.
