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The wonderful moments of cryptocurrency in 2020 and the top ten conjectures in 2021

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Do a review and imagine.

There are still 15 days left, and the turbulent and magical year of 2020 will usher in the final chapter.

This is a year worth reviewing in all walks of life. For some people, 2020 is a disaster, while others think that this year is the most A good year, especially from the perspective of the secondary market in 2020, is a bull market that has not been seen in more than ten years.

Of course, the cryptocurrency market is also the same. After getting on the high-speed train of commodities and technology stocks, Bitcoin set a new high. The daily trading volume reached 400 million US dollars, even surpassing this year's market darling pharmaceutical assets.

Bitcoin is obviously not the only highlight of cryptocurrency in 2020, Blockchain Capital in "2020 Year in The market has made a complete review, from macroeconomics, to encrypted finance, to prime brokerage and compliance, and finally made ten predictions for 2021.

As the top investment institution in the blockchain industry, Blockchain Capital’s investment map almost covers those well-known names in the industry: Coinbase, the largest trading platform in the United States, custodian institutions Xapo, Opensea, the largest trading platform for NFT, Block.one, the parent company of EOS, CoinList, the largest compliant financing platform, and dozens of well-known projects.

Combining the summary of Blockchain Capital and the organization of Rhythm BlockBeats, let's do a review and imagination together.

Macro environment

The macro environment of 2020 can basically be summed up in one word, release water, This is an unprecedented release of water.

As can be seen from the above figure, The currency issuance of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan has risen sharply this year. The Fed is the most obvious. The issuance of US dollars will increase by nearly 90 degrees in 2020.

The interest rates of various central banks are also on a downward trend. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan have all used zero interest rates to stimulate the economy, and Switzerland has even Yes, the negative interest rate strategy is enabled.

But even so, the global economy has been severely hit. The economic growth of China and the United States in 2020 has reached the lowest point in recent years. Compared with 2019 , the global economy grew by just 2.4%, the slowest growth since the 2009 economic crisis.

Bitcoin

The effect of releasing water is visible to the naked eye in the capital market. Among other types of assets, Bitcoin has the best market performance, setting a new record high, and the unit price is close to 20,000 US dollars. In Rhythm's view, everything stems from the epidemic.

The general environment is releasing water, money flows into the capital market, and Bitcoin with attributes such as commodities, technology, and risk aversion enters the field of vision of institutions, and buys Bitcoin through Grayscale Capital There are more and more currency institutions. At the same time, retail investors also have investment needs. In the U.S. stock market, Tesla and Weilai’s historically high targets make them daunting, and Bitcoin, which has been lying at $10,000 for a long time, is a good choice.

As a result, PayPal provided its 300 million users with a channel to buy Bitcoin. With the support of institutions and retail investors, the price of Bitcoin has risen. This year, all have stepped out of the "deep V" curve, and Bitcoin is just one of them.

Many opinions believe that this year’s new high of Bitcoin does not seem to have the voice of the previous bull market, because we can’t just focus on Bitcoin, look at the world, almost all All assets are rising, Bitcoin is not so recognizable, it is just an asset allocation.

Ethereum and Decentralized Finance

Ethereum in 2020 has started two conversions, one is the consensus conversion, starting from PoW to enter the process of converting PoS, and starting the 0th phase of the original plan; The second is value conversion, from the value of the ICO token financing era to the DeFi era.

In Rhythm's view, the development of DeFi may also be related to the general environment. The underlying assets such as stablecoins continue to increase and become the basis for the outbreak of DeFi.

The development of the DeFi field this year cannot be summed up in a few sentences. ", this is currently the most comprehensive review of the DeFi full-stack; =1&sn=fa31715656a9a073a9646913ba94d519&chksm=84492355b33eaa4304b234ecc0a59dc180f13704bbb887ad603b6ab34299bd7f5cbd1b4eef04&scene= 21#wechat_redirect" textvalue=""2020 Encrypted Financial Market Report"" tab="innerlink" hasload="1">"2020 Encrypted Financial Market Report" , this is the annual development of encrypted finance organized by Rhythm Research Institute, which sorts out the outbreak of decentralized finance in detail.

Stablecoin and CBDC

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Stable coins have ushered in explosive growth this year. From about US$6 billion at the beginning of the year to more than US$26 billion today, of which USDT issuance exceeds US$20 billion, Tether still firmly occupies the leading position in the stablecoin market.

Rapid growth and stability Cryptocurrency has unknowingly affected the encryption industry. The rise of derivatives market, liquidity mining and DeFi has enriched the usage scenarios of stablecoins such as USDC and DAI, and infrastructure such as encrypted wallets has also boosted the development of stablecoins. universal. Data shows that stablecoins currently account for 40% of the daily settlement volume on the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.

In addition to stable coins, countries have also accelerated the development and launch of central bank digital currency (CBDC). It can be clearly seen from the figure below that countries around the world hold different attitudes towards CBDC.

Among them, many countries including China and Russia have formulated corresponding bills on CBDC, while the United States and Japan are still under study. In October of this year, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell expressed his opinion that CBDC may improve the payment system in the United States, and the Federal Reserve needs to evaluate the impact that CBDC may have on a series of key issues.

Broker Market

Since the beginning of this year, the trading volume of centralized trading platforms has begun to explode. Judging from the data, Binance, Coinbase and Kraken still maintain their leading positions in the market, and this year's fastest growing The most eye-catching decentralized trading track is Uniswap. On December 15, according to the data provided by Uniswap founder Hayden Adams, the total transaction volume of the platform has exceeded 50 billion US dollars, ranking firmly as the leader in the encrypted asset DEX subdivision track.

In addition to providing a platform for asset transactions, there are also segments in the crypto brokerage business such as pledge, custody, execution, lending and solutions. With BisonTrails, Companies like Xapo, SFOX, Galaxy Digital, and BitGo have grown, and the entire crypto brokerage market is maturing.

The strong are always strong. In 2020, several acquisitions and IPO cases also occurred in the brokerage sector in the encryption field. Teams such as Binance, Coinbase, and DCG have all accelerated the pace of acquisitions, and the entire market structure has been consolidated.

The market has entered the early stage of mergers and acquisitions, large Brokers Showing Signs

Compliance

In 2020, Government Agencies Regulate Cryptocurrencies Regulation is still groping forward.

This year, the three-year-long Kik lawsuit came to an end, Telegram also stopped development under the regulatory ban, and as "IC0" disappeared, the US SEC Still "settling accounts after the fall", projects such as EOS and Engigma had to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle with the SEC, and even John McAfee was involved in lawsuits because of his previous platform.

In addition to token sales, offshore trading platforms and markets that have been identified as non-compliant by regulators have also begun to face civil and criminal proceedings in the United States. The most typical case is BitMEX.

Regulators are paying more and more attention to rigged markets. Regulators believe that commodity markets such as BitMEX are extremely vulnerable to manipulation and conflicts of interest, and do not comply with regulatory requirements including KYC/AML; tools such as Helix that provide currency mixing services can easily facilitate or confuse criminal activities. Based on the above considerations, the CFTC and FinCEN have taken civil actions, and the Department of Justice has brought criminal actions.

Corresponding to this, compliance Or “regulator-friendly” entities, platforms or institutions such as Securitize, Kraken, Coinbase, TRM, and Chainalysis are supported by regulators.

The following is the time map of major global compliance practices in 2020:

Blockchain Capital believes that IC0 regulations ultimately benefit non-token offering service providers It also re-examined that as long as the following two requirements are met, it belongs to the scope of investment contracts: (a) use the funds obtained from token sales to accelerate the development of networks or protocols; (b) issue tokens without actual use scenarios currency. It is worth noting that even if tokens are issued, they are not necessarily securities.

Since the beginning of this year, with the rise of DeFi, supervision has also put forward new requirements for token issuers. In order to avoid touching the "red line", the team can build the agreement before the token is issued; the issued token is used as compensation for the participants of the agreement, not for sale; in addition, the value of the token is based on the governance rights of the agreement , the user's roles are equivalent to shareholders and directors.

Decentralized protocols should be "software, not services". The DeFi protocol provides interactive services for users around the world, and this operation is carried out through smart contracts. It is especially important that smart contracts must be open source software and not subject to the long-term technical or governance control of core developers, at least developers should not have the authority to “close the protocol”; according to the design, DeFi protocols should allow users to participate in governance middle.

Application

In 2020, cryptocurrencies will gradually become known to more people. One of the most direct manifestations is that according to the official data released by MetaMask, from April to September this year, the number of monthly active users of MetaMask increased from 270,000 to 1 million, and the influence of Ethereum and DeFi is expanding.

In addition to encrypted native applications, financial technology portals are also "filtering" the market's interest in Bitcoin.

Some important use cases are commendable, such as PayPal announced the opening of cryptocurrency trading services to 300 million users; Perceived changes; eToro continues to strengthen cryptocurrency Staking and asset expansion; and SoFi has been approved by NYBitlicense, clearing the way to provide encrypted trading services to more people, etc.