The Bitcoin price has lowered down a bit, so naturally the interest of crypto investors is turning to altcoins again. Unsurprisingly, the most popular blockchain trend of 2021 are NFTs, but projects related to metaverse are quickly gaining momentum and if they keep growing at this rate, they may dominate the crypto ecosystem in 2022. Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting news from the fascinating world of altcoins!
NFTs: Officially the Most Popular Crypto Trend of 2021
For anyone who has been following crypto news for the past year, it must come as no surprise: Non-Fungible Tokens have been the biggest blockchain trend of 2021. According to new Google Trends statistics, NFTs are quickly turning into a phenomenon in itself, which might even surpass the world of traditional cryptocurrencies in popularity.
The data collected by Google shows that the interest in NFT is not only lowering, but on the contrary - it is constantly growing as Non-Fungible Tokens start to be considered as a cultural trend, and not just another blockchain-related asset class.
When it comes to geographic distribution of the interest in NFTs, most NFT fans are located in Asian countries such as China, Hong Kong, Philippines and Singapore, with Western countries rating surprisingly low on the list of countries with the highest popularity of Non-Fungible Tokens.
The most interesting fact is that the searches for the term “NFT” have already surpassed in number many popular crypto-related words such as “Ethereum”, “DeFi”, “Dogecoin” and even “blockchain”. Although for now “Bitcoin” still remains a more popular word than “NFT”, it’s possible that one day in the future this too will change, and the interest in Non-Fungible Tokens will be greater than in the original and most valuable digital currency.
Crypto.com Acquires Naming Rights to the Staples Center In Los Angeles
The massively popular cryptocurrency trading and investing platform Crypto.com has recently purchased the naming rights for the Staples Center in Los Angeles - one of the largest sports arenas in LA. Beginning on December 25, 2021, the popular venue known for hosting basketball, ice hockey and boxing matches will be renamed from Staples Center to Crypto.com Arena.
The cost of acquiring the naming rights to the venue for 20 years was $700 Million, but it seems like the investment has started to bring immediate returns to Crypto.com. Following the announcement, the CRO token price has appreciated by 42.88%, making it one of the 5 biggest gainers of the past week, and one of the top 20 largest cryptocurrencies on the market with the total market cap surpassing $12 Billion.
IOTX Price Rally Slows Down
Over the past couple weeks, the IOTX token has made spectacular gains of almost 377%, following the announcement of rebranding from IoTeX to MachineFi. The altcoin which previously marketed itself with the concepts of Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence has decided to switch its focus to DeFi, metaverse and NFTs.
Unfortunately, it looks like switching to a more current set of buzzwords was not enough to create a long term bullish price action for IOTX. After a two week-long rally, the price started to fall down, and over the past 7 days, MachineFi/IoTeX has decreased in value by over 5%.
The Sandbox Rallies By over 87% Over the Past 7 Days, Becomes the Best Performing Major Coin of the Week
The recent announcement that Facebook will rebrand itself to Meta and focus on developing virtual reality solutions has massively influenced the cryptocurrency ecosystem as well. Numerous blockchain projects have started to add the term “metaverse” to their websites and whitepapers, while blockchain games utilizing virtual worlds have gained renewed popularity among the investors.
This week, the most successful project vaguely related to the metaverse was The Sandbox (SAND), a digital world which lets the users purchase plots of virtual land in the form of NFTs. Over the past 7 days, the SAND price has increased by almost 90%, making it by far the best performing major crypto asset of the week.
SHIB Price In a Downfall: Is the Short-Time Shiba Inu Rally Over Already?
Shiba Inu has come out of nowhere and quickly became the most successful Dogecoin clone, for a brief time even surpassing its predecessor in market capitalization. However, the SHIB price has been decreasing ever since reaching an all-time high of $0.00008845 on October 28th.
Over the past week, Shiba Inu decreased in price by further 21%, and reached a 7-day low of $0.00004078. It now looks very improbable for SHIB to lose another zero anytime soon, and many retail investors who were buying Shiba Inu near the ATH out of fear of missing out have already experienced a loss of over 50%.