Even if Bitcoin has rebounded dramatically from its all-time high of $69,000 in 2021, the digital currency is still up 60% year-to-date. Gold has decreased by more than 5% within the same time period.

Considering global inflation on the rise, Bitcoin’s market performance over gold demonstrates that investors may view it as a stronger hedge against inflation than gold. The whole crypto market valuation increased to almost $3 trillion this year, while Bitcoin’s dominance plummeted from around 70% at the start of the year to 40%. This indicates that a number of altcoins have surpassed Bitcoin by a significant margin.

Multiple altcoins are expected to attract investors’ interest as cryptocurrencies become more widely used. Over the following year, these might generate significant profits for investors. Here’s what took place last week in the world of cryptocurrencies.

Amid Electricity Shortages, Kosovo Government Places Ban On Crypto Mining

Kosovo has banned crypto mining on Tuesday in an effort to reduce electricity use. The government made the decision after Kosovo’s energy supply fell below the required levels. Law enforcement agencies are expected to intervene to block the manufacture of cryptocurrencies and try to locate places where such operations take place. Cryptocurrency mining has become more popular in Northercrypto Kosovo. The 1.8 million population-strong country now imports more than 40% of its energy. While crypto miners have been able to take advantage of low-cost energy, the high electricity usage is incompatible with a country experiencing widespread power outages.

A Metaverse Network Built on aelf Blockchain

Aelf Enterprise has approached 35k TPS, per sidechain. Future users and transactions on the chain will surpass hundreds or thousands of times the level of today. With this platform, users can gain access to a single solution to breaking industrial bottlenecks, including performance and cross-chain functionality. aelf has invited its own oracle to solve this problem. aelf versatile oracle helps connect off-chain and on-chain, mesh network structure creates communication between public chains. The Top of OASIS Hackathon aims to support early-stage projects and ideas from the open-source developer community.

Lightning Speed: Taproot And The Lightning Network, A Match Made In Heaven

Taproot is a combination of three Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) that enhance this scripting infrastructure. The key of Taproot that unlocks all the others is the introduction of Schnorr Signatures. Multiple parties are able to combine their keys to a single public key, thereby allowing them to sign a single message. Taproot is a toolkit with which developers all over the world will create new features and improvements. It’s an elegant way to prevent nodes from spamming the network with fake channels. With enough hostile nodes, a bad actor could paint a fairly detailed picture of the flow of funds.

2022: The Year Of Crypto, Why Many People Are Going Digital…

The S&P 500 surged 28%, and gold dropped by 7% in the same period, marking the third consecutive year that Bitcoin has outperformed the two. This doesn’t mean bitcoin will hold more value than gold, but this does show how people are starting to shift from the old way of thinking via the web. Crypto generated over $23 billion in trading volume in 2020, according to data from DappRadar. Digital wallets allow you to store and transfer crypto funds like a bank account. Some 150 million American adults say they’ve swapped cash and credit for digital wallets at least once.

Ethereum Inventor Starts 2022 Revisiting Ideas, Where Was He Wrong?

Vitalik Buterin has come out of a self-imposed Twitter hibernation period, as he called via his personal account. He reviewed some of the ideas, proposals, and thoughts from this past decade to find if he maintains the same position as when he first talked about them. He also admitted feeling “proud” about its proposals to build Uniswap, or more specifically a decentralized exchanges on this network, and many other use cases for Ethereum which “basically predicted DeFi”.

Related article | Bitcoin & Ethereum Market Overview: 3 January 2022

President Bukele Predicts BTC At $100k With Hope That More Countries Adopt It As Legal Tender

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele tweeted his forecasts for Bitcoin in the year on New Year’s Day 2022. He expects two more countries to join El Salvador in adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. He also predicted a bull run that would push the price of Bitcoin to a new all-time high of $100,000. El Salvador is planning to begin development on the so-called Bitcoin City in 2022. The country also announced plans to issue $1 billion in bonds to fund the purchase of more bitcoin. Bukele predicts that volcano bonds will be oversubscribed and that there is going to be a huge surprise at the Bitcoin Conference.

VeChain Foundation Announces New Stablecoin, Could It Create Fresh Demand For VET?

The VeChain Foundation has hinted at the possible release of a new native stablecoin called VeUSD. The organization little details on this new product but announced to its followers that it’ll be “something special”. The stablecoin will be a tool to “unleash” DeFi capabilities for the VeChain ecosystem. The VeChain Foundation has announced the creation of a stablecoin, similar to the one introduced in Terra with the Colombus-5 upgrade. This could replace VTHO, the utility used to power transactions on this chain. As of press time, VET trades at $0.085 with a 1.95% loss in the past day.

Time For The Apes: Mutant Ape Yacht Club And BAYC Sales Surge, Floor Prices Spike More Than 40%

Both BAYC and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT sales have risen since Eminem disclosed he purchased a BAC non-fungible token for $452K. The MAYC project has seen a nearly 500% spike in trading volume. The average sale price has risen from around 8 ETH (over $32,000) on December 21 to over 12.3 ETH yesterday. The Mutant Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection had the most volume this week. BAYC’s overall market value is currently $2.73 billion, according to all-time metrics. The NFT market has exploded in 2021, with almost $10.7 billion in trade activity in Q3.

Eminem Buys Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT That Looks Like Him For $452K

Eminem has joined the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), purchasing one of the non-fungible token (NFT) apes for 123.45 ether ($462,000). The rapper now owns 15 NFTs on the OpenSea platform. “I’m living in a simulation,” said GeeGazza, who sold the ape to Eminem. Eminem received 124 ether from an account known as georgio.eth on ENS. The account owns 504 NFTs from 51 different collections, including Bored Ape Yacht Club #4936. Slim Shady and Paul Rosenberg also joined a host of venture funds that invested $30 million in the NFT market.

What’s Beef? Reviewing The Historic Battle Of Ethereum vs. Cardano

In the world of crypto, we have had a melting pot, stuffed with all kinds of herbs brewing beef. In basketball, it’s the Lakers vs Celtics, in boxing, Furry vs Wilder, and in hip-hop, Jay-Z vs Nas. Let’s take a look into the history of these two blockchain giants, Cardano and Ethernet. ADA, formerly known as the “Ethereum-killer,” has been in the news for quite some time. Many investors have been waiting for Cardano to take the throne, but Ethereum has just stayed elating and on the rise – despite obstacles such as high gas fees.

Both ADA and ETH continue to have beef, but other emerging tokens have challenged ADA’s position lately as well. Next year and the years to come will be exciting as we find out who will go and who will stay.

MicroStrategy Remains One Step Ahead With $94M Bitcoin Purchase

MicroStrategy announced that it has bought more bitcoins to add to its balance sheet. The company had bought a total of 1,914 BTC between December 9th and 29th. Each of the BTC was bought at an average of $49,229 and the total cost of the bitcoins purchased came out to $94.2 million. MicroStrategy is the public company with the largest bitcoin holdings in the globe. The company has spent about $3.75 billion on BTC in the past two years. Its total bitcoin holdings now sit above $6.1 billion, indicating that it has been a lucrative investment for them.

Related article | Is it possible for a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to be hacked or shut down?

What DAOs Can Do: Exciting Or Worrying? Rethinking 2021

DAOs are believed to be the most efficient and important coordination tool for businesses and other organizations nowadays. Like in any innovation, there are worries about what it might all mean in the future. Some have pictured scenarios in which smart contracts fully replace the decisions that used to be handled by managers. DAOs represent a promise to defy previous organization models, this means they can also have a higher impact on society. Some believe that the cost of tokens is a great feature of DAOs because it can show stakers care about the project. What if the project is no longer centered on investments but finding better ways to achieve helpful and successful decisions?

The Year Of Alt Season: Altcoins Dominate Market In 2021

The advent of the alt seasons this year had seen multiple altcoins rally towards new highs. Most of the time, they followed the growth of bitcoin. At other times, these assets broke free and rallied on their own accord. This has led to bitcoin losing a significant portion of its market dominance. Altcoins, Ether, Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu all showed out in the indexes with triple-digit gains for the year.

The Mid Cap Index came out as the winner for 2021 marking returns of 830%. Bitcoin saw the second-lowest returns with 179%, but even it saw returns over 100% higher than that of bitcoin.

Plutus: ADALend’s Decentralized Application Backend

Plutus, a platform that provides a native smart contract language and infrastructure, was launched with the Alonzo protocol upgrade. The Plutus platform enables developers to create decentralized apps that interact with distributed ledgers via scripting capabilities. ADALend intends to construct its smart contracts with an emphasis on security, maintainability, and modularity. The Plutus Application Backend (PAB) presents discoverable interfaces to external clients, like a mobile application and a website. PAB is also responsible for the security and user authorization of the financial data. It will be able to handle complex integration and business logic, required for the broader financial ecosystem.

Recapping 2021 Memecoin Mania: Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, & More

The year 2021 observed an incredible memecoin mania, with Dogecoin and Shiba Inu at the center. Both DOGE and SHIB saw rallies that were unprecedented even in the crypto world. The rally was carried by memes, and one of the catchphrases used by users was “We Like The Coin”.