The Bitcoin price is currently stuck just below $47k at press time. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is having a slow start to 2022 as the bearish clouds continue to hang over the digital currency. Altcoins on the other hand had a slow weekend too with most price movements on the lower side. More on that later on.

In other news, the Bitcoin network is experiencing a record hash rate, as much as 207.53 Exa Hash per second as it celebrates its 13-year anniversary. It is hard to imagine a world without the digital currency now but most of us were around when it all started. We have witnessed great history in the making that will become relevant for centuries. 

According to one Wharton finance professor, Bitcoin is now the new Gold, at least for the millennial age group. He also supported his statement with several key facts and figures. More on that later on. 

A South Korean presidential candidate is using Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to raise funds for his campaign. Lee Jae-Myung, the candidate of the Democratic party is using this out-of-the-box solution to raise money for his election. Jae -Myung revealed that he was using this as a tactic to get into touch with the younger generation. He also stated that he was looking to accept crypto donations. South Korea is recently increasing its anti-crypto ante and it remains to be seen how financial authorities respond to it.

Speaking of South Korea, leading Korean smartphone manufacturer Samsung has started a plan to use blockchain technology to help the fight against climate change. The top smartphone manufacturer is starting a tree plantation drive in drought-hit Madagascar and is now tracking it with distributed ledger technology. 

The number of billionaires and big capital managers entering the crypto sector has seen a massive spike during 2021. This shows us that the crypto sector is attracting big money and the trend is likely to continue in the near future. 

Bitcoin Stuck Below $47k

Bitcoin remained stuck below $47k for a long period of time over the weekend. After spending most of its time around Sunday at $47k, Bitcoin rose a little to around $47.4k earlier in the day. It then dipped back to around $46.8k in the morning hours and then recovered again to $47.6k around 1:20 PM. Near press time, the digital currency registered a dive below $47k again and recorded a 24-hour low of around $46.3k in the process. It is now hovering around that valuation at press time.

Going forward, Bitcoin is having a very slow start to 2022 and that is reflecting in its price index. While the bears have been unable to make any significant progress, they are proving to be the perfect party poopers at the moment. All they need to do is to stop the crypto’s advance at the start of 2022 and that is going to keep bulls at bay. 

The total market capitalization of Bitcoin was around $877 billion at press time and its share of the proceedings was 39.7% which is below the key level of 40%.

Altcoins Post Losses

Other cryptocurrencies aka altcoins posted some losses during the weekend but some did manage to score some gains. Algorand (ALGO, 8%) was the big performer followed by Terra (LUNA, 3%) and Chainlink (LINK, 4%). Some of the other altcoins also posted better figures than Bitcoin itself and that has resulted in the premier digital currency losing some dominance figures.

In Other News…..

Finance Professor Believes Bitcoin is the New Gold for Millennials

In a recent interview with CNBC talk show Squawk box, Jeremy Siegel, the professor, showed how Bitcoin nearly doubled in 2021 when inflation figures were at their highest and Gold remained slightly bullish. 

The whole idea of an inflation hedge is that the asset should increase, preferably more than the inflation figures but Gold failed to achieve that and Bitcoin exceeded. According to Siegel, millennials are looking at Bitcoin the same way the older generations were looking at Gold in the 70s when Gold demonetization was begun. However, the tussle between Gold and Bitcoin isn’t over yet and is likely to continue on in the near future.  

The year is almost over, and although we haven’t witnessed a spectacular December rally like in 2020, the last 7 days were quite favorable for blockchain investors in general, and for altcoin enthusiasts specifically. While most of the top 10 largest altcoins didn’t make significant gains, many of the smaller alternative cryptocurrencies managed to grow in price massively. Without any further delay, let’s take a look at what has happened on the altcoin market in the last week of 2022!

SushiSwap Performs Superbly - But Is It Truly the Beginning of a Massive Rally, or just a Recovery?

The best performing major altcoin of the week was SushiSwap (SUSHI). Over the past 7 days, the SUSHI price has increased by an impressive 63%. However, while that’s certainly good news for SUSHI holders, a deeper look at the SushiSwap price history suggests that the situation might not be as bullish as it initially seems.

Over the last 1.5 months, the SUSHI price has decreased by 65%, which was a bitter conclusion to a generally bad year for SushiSwap. Once the second biggest decentralized exchange in the ecosystem and a serious competitor to Uniswap, SushiSwap has lost most of its significance, and with it - most of its market capitalization as well.

In other words, while an increase of 63% in a week looks impressive, it’s worth noting that SUSHI is still nowhere near a true recovery, and has not even managed to fully reverse the losses from the past couple months. The SUSHI price is still almost 61% down from the all-time high of $23.38 reached in March, 2021, and it would take a tremendous rally to reach that price again in the near future.

It’s also worth noting that the increase in SUSHI price doesn’t seem to be motivated by any organic factors. Instead, the price looks to be pumped by whales, who have acquired an additional 10% of the SUSHI total supply since the beginning of November. But will the activity of whales be enough to give the SUSHI price a boost necessary to sustain a long-lasting uptrend, or is the current price spike temporary?

Cardano Ecosystem Grows - Will 2022 Be the Year of ADA?

The largest altcoins didn’t make significant gains this week, with the exception of Cardano. Over the past 7 days, the ADA price has increased by almost 8%. Currently, ADA is the 6th largest cryptocurrency in the ecosystem, and can soon flip Solana (SOL) to enter the list of top 5 coins by market capitalization.

The last couple weeks weren’t very good for Cardano, mainly due to the troublesome launch of the Alonzo hard fork. However, the 2021 as a whole was spectacular for ADA, and the recent increase in price seems to reflect it.

Since last Christmas, the ADA ecosystem has grown tremendously. The number of Cardano wallets has increased from just 190,000 to over 2,5 million, making Cardano one of the most widely used cryptocurrencies in the world.

Polygon Finally Provides an Explanation For Its Secretive Hard Fork

Usually, hard forks are a very big deal in the crypto ecosystem, and they are often preceded with months of fiery debates and building hype. This wasn’t the case with the Polygon (MATIC) hard fork that happened last month in complete silence. Now, almost a month later, the Polygon team has finally explained why the hard fork was necessary.

According to Jaynti Kanani, the CEO of Polygon, on December 3rd a critical security vulnerability was discovered - so serious that it could potentially erase the entire $24 billion market cap of MATIC. Very soon, the bug in the smart contract was patched - but before that happened, a hacker reportedly managed to steal MATIC tokens worth over $2 million.

Although the vulnerability has been dealt with in a swift manner before any serious damage was done, the way in which Polygon introduced the hard fork caused much controversy. The MATIC community felt surprised and confused with the sudden, and unannounced change - however, the Polygon executives vow to keep up with the strategy of “silent updates” in the future.

Elon Musk Pumps Another Dog Token

Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and an avid cryptocurrency influencer, has decided to pump the price of yet another meme crypto. On Christmas Day, Musk tweeted a photo of his dog wearing a Santa outfit with the caption “Floki Santa”.

Unsurprisingly, Musk’s tweet was enough to cause the price of Santa Floki (HOHOHO) to rapidly skyrocket by over 5,300%. Of course, the price has started to decrease as fast as it grew, and it has already retracted 70% of the gains.

Bitcoin had a slow start to 2021 as the index remained largely stuck around key support levels. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization had a mixed 2021 overall despite the net gains. There was some faint optimism that 2022 could start with a bang but that hasn’t happened till press time at least. It has been more of the same. Altcoins were also largely steady throughout the day with minimal changes. 

The US Democratic party is slowly shifting towards a completely anti-crypto narrative. Leading legislators like Elizabeth Warren and others believe that the increased popularity of the crypto scene is likely to affect common people like scams. The same narrative is shared by many others within the party. More on that later on.

An Indian Tax authority has unearthed a tax evasion scandal involving WazirX, the country’s pioneering digital asset exchange. The episode involves evasion of around $6.62 million worth of taxes from the exchange which were recovered by the Central GST and Central Excise Committee of Mumbai (CGST). The scam involves its native WRX tokens that are used for payment and various other services on the platform. The regulator believed they are taxable and found out that the tokens weren’t considered in the tax reporting by the exchange. There is a debate whether the native tokens are utility tokens or security tokens and there is no end to that debate, yet.

Charles Hoskinson, Ethereum co-founder and founder of Cardano blockchain network, has lashed out against the Venture Capitalists (VCs) of Silicon Valley and other areas. He pointed out the considerable growth of the platform and made the case that many of these big-money executives don’t understand how blockchain networks operate. But, he did predict that 2022 might be slower for the crypto sector as compared to 2021. This means that he is also expecting a price tank at some point later in the year. 

Bitcoin Remains Steady at $47k

Bitcoin rose slightly earlier but it has remained stuck around the $47k value for most of the day. The cryptocurrency recorded a short dip in the buildup to New Year’s Day but recovered later on back to square one.

The last 24 hours started with Bitcoin at around $47k. It traded sideways for a while before it started to drop in the buildup to the New Year. It posted a low of around $45.8k in a matter of hours and stayed there for a little time. However, just before the New Year actually happened, Bitcoin recovered back to around $47k in multiple phases. For the rest of the day, the digital currency fared slightly bullish and managed to hit $47.5k just before press time. But, overall it was a really slow day for the digital currency and not the big bullish one many had hoped for. 

Going forward, Bitcoin is in a bearish web for the moment and there seems to be no escape at the moment. The digital currency went above $50k a few days ago but couldn’t sustain itself above it. While many indicators are quite bullish right now and 2022 brings with it a new hope, the price itself is very dead at the moment and favouring the bears. The bulls need to bring the index above $52 convincingly with a big volume move preferably. If they can’t do it quickly, 2022 will continue on with the bearish bias and become a party pooper. 

The total market capitalization of Bitcoin was around $904 billion and its share of the proceedings was 40.4%.

Altcoins Remain Steady

Other cryptocurrencies aka altcoins remained largely steady for much of the day. They posted some losses just like Bitcoin during the early hours, especially to the countdown of the end of 2021, they made some half decent recoveries later on.

The main gainers included Avalanche (AVAX, 6%), Polkadot (DOT, 3%) and Ripple (XRP, 2.5%). Losers included Unisap (UNI, -4%) alone.

In Other News….

US Democratic Party Moving towards Crypto Skepticism

The ruling Democratic party of the United States is apparently moving towards anti-crypto leanings even though their voter base has millions of crypto users and not just big companies themselves. 

While the Blockchain lobbyists are trying hard to soften their tone, the regulatory hawks are becoming a majority in the party and that may present further problems. Many of the younger generation from the party is pro-crypto, case in point the New York city Mayor-elect who has agreed to take his salaries in Bitcoin. Perhaps the party needs to allow the younger generation to take the reins, at least on this matter which the old guard can’t seem to get a grip around.

2021 was the most successful year for Bitcoin so far. From a tremendous rise in price to federal governments and public companies investing in BTC. Unfortunately, not everything was rosy. Financial regulators around the world increased their watch on the leading cryptocurrency. Scammers also turned the success of BTC in 2021 and made it a hallowing experience for some.

Below is a recap of top Bitcoin news making headlines in 2021:

BTC Price Reaches an All-Time High (ATH)

BTC started the year changing hands at 32,000 USD after breaking its 2017 record of $20K in December 2020. The new ATH was just the beginning of a stronger momentum later in the year.

It crossed the $64K mark in April and later touched its 2021 highest of $69K seven months later in November. The overall market capitalization also recorded an ATH of 3 trillion US dollars.

In between the all-time highs, the bears took charge, sinking the price to lows of $30K. The price is still recovering, trading at around $50K. With roughly four days left before the end of 2021, it’s unlikely BTC will be able to return to its highest price or even set a new one.

El Salvador Adopts Bitcoin

El Salvador embraced the leading crypto as a legal tender on September 7, 2021. The move placed BTC alongside the USD when paying for goods and services in the country. The central American country also set up a Bitcoin trust to facilitate the conversion between the two legal tenders.

Since adopting BTC and setting up a trust, El Salvador has been accumulating Bitcoin. In some cases, the central American country has liquidated part of its bitcoin holding to fund projects such as a veterinary hospital.

Public Companies Invest in Bitcoin

In 2021, Tesla, the leading electric car maker, announced it had drilled 1.5 million USD into Bitcoin. More than buying BTC, the car maker told the US securities watchdog that it plans to accept the virtual asset as a payment method.

The decision raised eyebrows because the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, associates himself with technologies with low carbon emissions.

The conflict led to Tesla abandoning plans to add Bitcoin to its list of allowed payment methods. As a result, BTC lost around seven percent. However, the electric car maker held on to the Bitcoin it had bought.

Apart from Tesla, Microstrategy, a business analytics company, increased its BTC holding in 2021. As of December 21, 2020, Microstrategy held slightly above 70,400 BTCs. Fast forward to December 10, 2021, the company holds over 122,400 Bitcoins.

The year also saw some companies dive into BTC through Bitcoin funds, such as the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). For example, top GBTC shareholders in 2021 included ARK Investment Management, Horizon Kinetics, Simplify Asset Management, Miller Value Partners, Systelligence, and Parkwood.

Companies File for Bitcoin ETFs, SEC Rejects Them

This year has also seen the filing of both futures and spot-based Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

However, the SEC favored futures-based BTC ETFs compared to their spot friends. For instance, In October, the securities watchdog okayed VanEck and Valkyrie’s futures-focused Bitcoin ETFs but rejected spot-based Bitcoin ETF such as the one filed by Kryptoin.

The SEC noted that the applications failed to meet standards “designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices.”

China Bans Everything Bitcoin and Crypto

Although China banning crypto is not a surprise considering it has unsuccessfully done so in the past, this year was different. In 2021, the South East Asian country was more committed to eradicating everything from Bitcoin mining, trading, and selling BTC-focused software and e-books.

The country took it a notch higher and declared Bitcoin mining as “extremely harmful” to the environment, and started hunting down and shutting crypto mining activities. It also added crypto mining to the list of blacklisted industries.

Bitcoin miners migrated to Russia, Kazakhstan, and the USA. Crypto trading platforms such as Binance and Huobi also indicated plans to stop serving customers in mainland China.

What’s in Store For Bitcoin in 2022?

Although it’s hard to predict with certainty what will happen to BTC in 2022, we expect the regulatory scrutiny to continue.

The Bitcoin price is also likely to touch new highs in the coming year. In addition, more publicly-traded companies are likely to see Bitcoin as a better hedge against inflation compared to gold and other precious metals.