Arcane Research Releases Its Crypto Predictions for 2022

Blockchain data research firm Arcane Research looks back on the year in its final 2021 report and presents its crypto market predictions for 2022.

Arcane’s Dec. 28 The Weekly Update report focuses on Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also delves into other major coins, decentralized finance (DeFi), memecoins, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Derivatives, etc. Arcane predicts what will happen in 2022 for each of the topics covered in the report.

"Bitcoin will outperform the S&P 500 in 2022."

The report states that Bitcoin has outperformed the S&P 500 in 2021. Bitcoin is up 73 percent this year, compared with the S&P 500's 28 percent gain, and Arcane sees Bitcoin continuing that performance next year. The S&P 500 includes the 500 largest companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges.

"XRP and ADA fall out of the top ten"

Arcane noted that Binance Coin (BNB) has seen huge gains this year, peaking at 1,600% in May, and is up 1,344% for the year. Based on this, coupled with the market capitalization growth of Solana and Terra, and the NFT boom, analysts expect Ripple and Cardano to drop out of the top ten list.

Alternative layer-one solutions will continue to outperform Ethereum

While ETH has outperformed BTC this year, up 455% versus 73%, other Layer 1 (L1) blockchains have outperformed ETH. L1 refers to the independent, base layer blockchain. In 2021, Terra is up 14,823% and Fantom is up 13,549%.

More and more traditional game companies will add NFT

Developments in the crypto space this year have been largely defined by the massive sales of NFTs, with blockchain games such as Splinterlands and Alien Worlds counting around 526,000 daily active users, according to DappRadar. Arcane predicts that by 2022, traditional game brands will enter the NFT space and take advantage of this emerging market.

Even more crypto companies will go public, some with valuations exceeding $5 billion

Coinbase went public on April 14 this year, with a current market cap of $72 billion. The five largest crypto companies scheduled to go public in 2022 are all currently worth more than $1 billion. Arcane believes there will be other companies with valuations above $5 billion, such as cryptocurrency exchange Bullish, which is currently valued at $9 billion.

By the end of 2022, Bitcoin ETF will hold more than 1 million BTC

In 2021, several bitcoin futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were approved to launch. Together, they currently hold around 846,309 BTC, an increase Arcane said will only continue in 2022.

“Computing power will become more geographically distributed”

When China banned Bitcoin mining, the global Bitcoin hashrate dropped dramatically, then recovered almost suddenly. The United States now leads the world in computing power, followed by Kazakhstan and Russia. Arcane sees miners spreading further into regions such as Latin America.

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