By: David Drake

The coronavirus disease or COVID-19 outbreak single-handedly defined 2020 as this pandemic severely affected industries, economies, and the way of life around the world. Financial markets, stocks, and companies around the globe had a turbulent year and faced major setbacks like the imposed global lockdowns and termination of business operations. 

After several months of quarantine, the world is reeling from the effects of the pandemic and companies have started to adapt and look for ways to turn their investments around. News of COVID-19 vaccines being developed and being prepared for mass vaccinations around the world became the silver lining towards the end of 2020.

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain had a fair share of ups and downs in 2020. As of this writing, bitcoin price exceeded $37,000 and is expected to hit higher before this month ends. Fintech solutions and innovations move forward in the sector as the blockchain and crypto market grow.

Here is the rundown of my top 3 predictions in the blockchain and crypto space for 2021.

Bitcoin will hit $133,300 in the Q3-Q4 of 2021. Following the current market trend, I expect that bitcoin is going to hit $45,000 before January ends and will hit over $133,300 in the latter half of the year. This can be attributed to the increase in the demand for bitcoin with institutions and pension funds buying stocks and spending over $500 million to buy bitcoin through Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. This goes to show how cryptocurrency growth greatly affects the financial market in the past 5 years.

Regulatory frameworks being put in place and led by the SEC in the US. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US enforces regulations on all crypto companies who committed fraud and acts as the guardian to protect the consumers from any fraudulent transactions. Recently, SEC filed charges against Ripple Labs Inc., and its two executives for allegedly raising unregistered digital asset securities offering worth over $1.3 billion. This action highlights the stricter implementations of precautions to ensure the security in dealing with cryptocurrency and digital asset transactions. Just like my previous prediction for cryptocurrency regulations, the increase on the regulatory framework may be the result of more companies looking into the space and utilizing the technology and cryptocurrency transactions. As for tax enforcement and security, we are still a few years behind. But as the industry matures, we will start seeing progress and procedures on a government level in 2022.

Continued widespread blockchain adoption and cryptocurrency transactions in financial markets and other industries in 2021 (and a better understanding of how blockchain and cryptos work). We have seen an increase in crypto transactions and blockchain implementations on fintech solutions and in other industries like banking, real estate, media, esports, and more. As for financial markets and future blockchain adoption, I see that 2021 and 2022 will continue to be a protocol- and B2B-focused infrastructure development in the industry. The infrastructures and protocols like the B2B (business-to-business) solutions and the B2G (business-to-government) solutions have to be built and developed before the mainstream blockchain adoption takes off. One example would be PayPal offering a new service feature that allows their users in the US to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies using their accounts. It is very promising but there’s still a need to educate the people on the meaning and how cryptos and blockchain work.

People want solutions and they want to understand how the products work. We have to sell solutions and not entangle the consumers with magical, initially complicated words like blockchain and crypto DeFi or decentralized finance — that’s what we need to do with crypto and blockchain. It has to be user-friendly where the majority knows the concept of blockchain and crypto and how it operates. We’re still a few years behind, but it’s going to get there.

2021 will be a big year for crypto’s growth and will push bitcoin to very high levels — this progress might continue until 2022.