How much will bitcoin or any of the altcoins cost in 2023? Fantastic question. Even professional traders cannot foresee the price of crypt due to multiple impact factors. But as an investor, I want to reflect on something else. Are those who have already buried the crypt right, or is last year's market crash not the end?
Bugatti for bitcoin — failed
In February 2021, the capitalization of bitcoin $1 trillion for the first time ever. The first cryptocurrency grew by 900% in a year and traded at a price of $54,000 per coin.
Despite the record price, from investors there was no release. For example, the Square payment service, owned by Jack Dorsey, then over three thousand bitcoins.
Amid rising the bitcoin price, in March 2021, the founder of the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, Jesse Powell, made a sensational : by the end of 2022, one bitcoin can buy a Lamborghini, and in 2023, a Bugatti.
The forecast failed: today, you can only buy a Kia Rio or a Mitsubishi Mirage for a bitcoin. And this is after the boom of ETFs, NFTs, DeFi, and stablecoins. So what went wrong?
High interest rates — done
In 2022, the growth rates of blockchain technology remained high. For example, we witnessed the Ethereum protocol modernization: now, instead of the Proof-of-work algorithm, the blockchain uses Proof-of-stake. After the change, the network will 99.95% less energy.
However, this event was overshadowed by others - the bankruptcies of the Terra project, Voyager Digital and Celsius Network crypto banks, Three Arrows Capital hedge fund, BlockFi and FTX exchanges.
Also, inflation in the US 7% in 2022, just as in the early 1980s. In an attempt to curb inflation, the Federal Reserve raised rates seven times a year. The base rate is between 4.25% and 4.5%, the highest in 15 years.
The Fed's policy affected the value of risky assets, namely stocks and crypto. The dollar strengthens as interest rates rise — risky assets fall. Due to this and the bankruptcy of key crypto projects, the cryptocurrency market collapsed. The media again started talking about the onset of - a decrease in the cost of all coins and a long bearish trend.
But I don’t agree that due to the fall (over the past year, according to the , market capitalization has more than halved - from $2 trillion to $800 billion) this segment can be put to rest.
When it comes to crypto, price fluctuations are the last thing you should focus on. I look at less obvious factors to understand the market prospects.
Venture capital impact
The activity of venture capitalists decreased significantly in late 2022. This information can make the beginners panic, but let's read the news more carefully.
How did the timing of entry into projects change the enthusiasm of investors? Seed and early-stage crypto startups larger checks in 2022 - $5-20 million versus $3-12 million in 2021. Investors are buying up young startups, meaning that the game is not over, and funds will be poured into the sector.
Besides, according to analysts, the cryptocurrency market is only developing. You can fail in school, but enter college on the first try. So the failure of 2022 is not a sentence, but only growing pains.
Development of Web3
Web3 is a new blockchain-based decentralized and tokenized incarnation of the Internet. It is both financial applications and NFTs. But the most dynamic segment of Web3 is blockchain games.
The crypto winter did not affect the growth of gaming programs based on distributed ledger technology: in 2022, the number of transactions in gaming blockchains by 94%.
It is such a strong trend that only a full-on electricity cuts across the planet can bring it down. So the entire blockchain sector will become less speculative and more practice-oriented.
Return of NFT
After COVID-19, even people far from business learned that the most affected sectors are recovering most actively after the crisis. This is exactly what should happen with the NFT segment.
Over 2022, it by 97%. But the fall is not a trend - unlike the arrival of big players in this market. NFT was launched as part of a loyalty program by the giant Starbucks. By year’s end, the list of majors that launched the NFT was with Reddit, Meta, Nike, Disney, Coca-Cola.
All these companies invested in the development of their own projects based on Web3 and will continue to develop them in 2023. My guess, other companies will pick up the trend, so the NFT market revival is only a matter of time.
Accumulation trend
In December 2013, on the Bitcointalk forum, a user GameKyuubi wrote a with a typo in the title - "I AM HODLING". He criticizes traders who use bitcoin to get rich, contrasting their position with his own - to keep the crypto even when market signals indicate a need for getting rid of the asset.
The term HODL became a meme, and the change in the number of hodlers became the data for analytical platforms to evaluate the development of the industry.
New statistics from Glassnode a sharp increase in the accumulation addresses in the Bitcoin blockchain. These are hodler wallets that have received at least two transfers in the past seven years. Yet, funds were never withdrawn from these addresses.
The number of such wallets reached almost 800,000, i.e. increased by 18% during the year. The figures show that the number of committed users of the service is growing.
Hodlers don't make money off bitcoin. They believe in its potential as a universal means of payment. And user growth is a major factor in the global adoption of bitcoin. I am sure that while there are those who faithfully accumulate crypto, and those who develop the blockchain and projects based on it, seasonal and annual jumps are just ripples in a pond. The most interesting things happen in the depths.
Source: .
