One Set of Dates, One Set of Numbers: Crypto’s UPS and Downs Last Year

The cryptocurrency market has reached all-time highs for the year 2021, and despite the negative movement in the last two months, overall, most players in the market are profitable, including a record high in November.

As usual, the last year has been marked by volatility, with many of the leading cryptocurrencies down 30% or more over the past 2-3 months. Among them, BTC -1.19%-news/">Bitcoin, the largest currency in the market, just celebrated its “birthday” on January 3. On this day, it was 13 years after the creation of the first block of Bitcoin. This block appeared for the first time. Batch 50 bitcoins.

The past year has seen quite a few dramatic events in the cryptocurrency market, including

• In February 2021, Musk led Tesla to announce a $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin, making it the first major Wall Street company to make such a large investment in cryptocurrency.
• In March 2021, the world’s most expensive NFT artwork was successfully auctioned, from the ownership of a collage of 5,000 digital works by American artist Mike Winkelmann, titled “Everydays: the First 5,000 Days”, which is also the current global auction price One of the three most expensive works of art. .
• In April 2021, Coinbase Global Inc was listed on Wall Street, becoming the first cryptocurrency exchange to be successfully listed on Wall Street. It was listed through a SPAC and closed at $85 billion on its first day. This also makes Coinbase the largest listed crypto exchange in the world. However, the company’s shares had fallen 23% by the end of the year.
• In May 2021, the cryptocurrency “Dogecoin DOGE -0.97%” launched in 2013 broke the historical record, and its price has soared 12,000 times since the beginning of 2021. The rise of Dogecoin is still largely due to Musk’s public support for the cryptocurrency. In May, he announced that he would use Dogecoin to fund SpaceX’s space missions, and that it will be launched in 2022. The Dog 1 satellite was launched to the moon. But by the end of the year, the price of Dogecoin fell, but it was still 3,650% higher than it was at the beginning of the year.
• In September 2021, the Chinese government announced that cryptocurrency mining activities are illegal in China, which dealt a serious blow to the industry.
• In October 2021, ProShares bitcoin futures-based fund ProShares bitcoin strategy ET was officially launched on Wall Street, which represented the approval of the US regulators to a certain extent and encouraged market sentiment.
• On November 10, 2021, the price of Bitcoin surged to an all-time high, driving almost the entire cryptocurrency market.

In addition to important dates, let’s take a look at some key points and numbers in the cryptocurrency market

• $2.18 trillion: According to data from the CoinMarketCap website, by the end of 2021, the total market value of cryptocurrencies is as high as $2.18 trillion, with a total of 16,238 digital currencies, and this number is rising. You know, at the beginning of 2021, the total value of this market is only 760 billion US dollars, that is to say, its market value has nearly doubled in one year, an increase of 187%. However, it should be noted that this market value is still about 27% lower than the all-time high of $3 trillion set on November 10. Among them, the market value of Bitcoin accounts for about 40% of the total market value.
• $68,789: This was Bitcoin’s all-time high on November 10, 2021, however, since then, in less than two months, Bitcoin’s price has fallen by a cumulative 29%, and by the end of 2021, the price About $46,300. After the slump at the end of the year, the price of bitcoin still rose by 60% throughout the year, with a total market value of $876 billion.
• $4891: This is the highest price of Ethereum ETH -1.62% in 2021. Although it has since dropped by about 25% from its peak, its price at the end of December is still 400% higher than that at the beginning of 2021. The total market value of this currency is about 438 billion US dollars, accounting for about 20% of the total market value of cryptocurrencies.
• $15.3 billion: This is the estimated revenue of bitcoin miners in 2021, according to a recent report by the American website The Block. This figure has increased by 206% compared to the whole of 2020. It should be noted that this estimate is based on the assumption that mining companies/individuals sell the bitcoins they mine and exchange them for fiat currency (deterministic income), however, there are also miners who tend to Hold the coins they mined.
• $25.1 billion: The Block’s report also estimates that global cryptocurrency funding is expected to total as much as $25.1 billion in 2021, including more than 1,700 venture capital projects completed by crypto startups and tech companies in the past year.
• Over $13 billion: This is the total NFT transaction volume for all of 2021, according to The Block report. Compared with the cumulative transaction volume of 33 million US dollars in 2020, this number has increased by 4,298%. The report also shows that in 2021, nearly 88% of the total transaction volume of the NFTs market will be concentrated on the OpenSea online trading platform. The platform’s transaction volume more than $12.5 billion.
• Over $3.2 billion: This is the cumulative 2021 volume of Bitcoin and Ethereum futures. According to The Block, this volume is up 338% compared to 2020, when the volume was about $7 trillion. The peak month for futures trading in the market is May 2021, with a monthly volume of over $4 trillion. The largest trading platform for the Bitcoin and Ethereum futures contracts market is Binance.
• Over $14 Trillion: This is the annual volume of cryptocurrency transactions reported by Centralized Cryptocurrencies for all of 2021, a 689% increase compared to 2020, with a total volume of $1.8 trillion in 2020. Among them, the cumulative trading volume of distributed cryptocurrency exchanges (DEX) in the past year has exceeded 1 trillion US dollars, compared with the centralized exchanges where most of the transactions in the cryptocurrency market are concentrated.