Daily Crypto Updates (Dec. 31, 2021): A Good 2021 For Crypto; What’s Next?
Crypto > Other Macro Assets?
With 2021 coming to a close, many experts’ projections of a $100k BTC price by the end of the year look set to be falling well short of their target (barring a New Year’s Eve miracle), as BTC is still only currently trading around the $47k level.
However, unmet expectations notwithstanding, there are some positive signs for BTC and the larger crypto market as head into the new year. For one, the open interest in the derivatives market has crept up again, hinting at the possibility of a local bottom for BTC and concomitantly, a corresponding short position shake-out in January 2022. Next, ETH has inched back above the $3,700 level, whilst other major large-caps have also managed to flip into the green after several consecutive days of losses.
Finally, although the leveraged-induced BTC sell-offs in November and December did indeed deal a severe blow to the year-to-date performance of the overall crypto market — if we were to just take a step back and look at the bigger picture, we will see that BTC has still actually managed to outperform most other non-crypto macro assets like oil and U.S. stocks, albeit by only a slight margin. The only macro asset to outperform BTC would be another cryptocurrency, ETH, as it has managed to post a staggering 400% year-to-date gain.
What a way to fly the flag for the entire crypto community as we head into the new year!
Hop on the Crypto Bandwagon Now!
Dormant BTC Wallet Comes Back Alive
As 2021 comes to a close, a dormant BTC wallet with 500 BTC that dates back to the Satoshi era has been re-activated again after 10 years. On Wednesday, crypto-tracking service Whale Alert flagged up a transfer of 165.33 BTC (worth an approximate $7.78 million) from a wallet that was last seen active in 2010, to an unknown address.
As we head into 2022, this incident serves as a great reminder of BTC’s potential to combat inflation, as the cache of this ancient BTC wallet can be observed to have risen sharply in value from $8,400 to $24 million, all within the span of a decade.
