The Blockchain and Crypto world is changing in a blink of an eye. One trend replaces another, new promising tokens, fundraising methods, community interaction approaches appear every new month.
2020 was exciting for those who monitor and participate in the crypto market - DeFi and DEX boom, ETH 2.0 launch, new interesting projects and niches, and surely BTC broke through its ATH - caught everyone’s attention.
As I cooperate with lots of fintech and blockchain companies, I’m able to detect new trends and I feel that sharing my opinion with you can be important. What should we expect from 2021. (But let’s put aside trading advice and BTC or other currency price rate prediction).
1. DeFi and DEX will continue their growth
This year was truly impressive for the DeFi segment. A rapid growth of locked USD in different projects (currently it is estimated as 13.5 Billion), the rise of new interesting projects, the whole world got familiar with words 'staking', 'farming' and 'governance token'.
I guess that 2021 will bring more and more projects and a higher supply on DeFi market. Nevertheless, always mind financial security and doublecheck information about the projects and do not trust in super fast profits only by word.
Decentralized Exchanges, so-called DEX, are coming alongside with DeFi Industry. 2020 year was a real breakthrough for many of DEXs, UniSwap is the most vivid example. This tendency will only get stronger during the upcoming 2021 as well as the IDO trend.
2. International companies and institutional investors turn to BTC
This year, several companies announced that they are converting part of their reserve assets to BTC. The loudest of them are, for example, MicroStrategy, PayPal, Galaxy and Square. And literally every month there are reports of new similar deals. Of course, this is a positive sign for the entire market. I think this trend will keep going in 2021. At the same time, such giants buy such large volumes hardly for quick speculation, which means that they will HODL their Bitcoins. This, in turn, should have a positive impact on the price of the main asset.
By the way, you can follow the companies that buy BTC here.
3. Growth of NFT tokens and projects
I wrote this year about NFT tokens and what is it. The idea itself is not new and has existed in the crypto market for quite a long time. Even there were already quite high-profile cases, for example, one of Andy Warhol's paintings was tokenized and sold in this way.
In 2021, NFTs will develop faster. After all, there are a huge number of different applications, that also include not only games and arts. It can be implemented in lots of industries: from real estate to law.
And already big media giants like the NBA and UFC are starting to work with NFT industry.
4. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC)
Rumors and expert opinions that very soon many governments will begin the transition to Central Bank electronic money (that are also often called in the media as government cryptocurrencies) have been circulating since 2016.
However, this year it became clear that the world is closer to such a transition than ever before. First of all, the pace of the race was set by China. I wrote about this here. Meanwhile, China has already started testing its e-currency, and many countries have announced that they are preparing their own developments in the field of government electronic money. It is unlikely that we are waiting for an instant rejection of Fiat, but in 2021, the race between the countries will definitely heat up.
5. ETH 2.0 and the infrastructure around it
One of the main Crypto events of 2020 was the launch of ETH 2.0. Already more than 2 million ETH are locked in the network. However, this is still only the first stage of the update. In the future, we expect a new consensus algorithm, staking, fast and cheap transactions - all this is promising and will potentially push the DeFi market with great speed. In 2021, ETH will be more interesting to watch than ever.
6. STO markets and tokenized assets will increase
In 2020, the STO market was not very active, especially compared to the DeFi market. However, I am sure that tokenized assets have a great future. And the first news came at the end of 2020 - the SEC made an important announcement that it would raise the limit for regulated funding fees that can be raised through the so-called Regulation Crowdfunding Campaign from $ 1 million to $ 5 million. This will allow the sale of securities without registration with the SEC. Also, many European States are beginning to quietly support the possibility of tokenizing assets and raising funds in this way. And one of the largest exchanges, Bittrex Global, for example, has launched trading in tokenized shares.
Will 2021 be the year of STO? While it is difficult to say, but definitely the ice has moved, and we will see more cases and news from this area for sure.
I tried to make this review as short and at the same time useful as possible. In fact, there are many more topics that we can talk about. However, these are the trends in the industry that I see now, without touching trading topics or price predictions. We can continue our discussion in my Twitter.
Share your opinion, what trends do you see? Which of the following do you think is the biggest trend? All from 2021!
In the meantime, if you have any questions about Crypto and Blockchain or you are an IDO/DeFi/crypto project and want to know more how to promote you project, you can always contact me via Telegram (@baloyan) or LinkedIn.