In a special episode of CoinMarketRecap, Connor is joined by Molly Jane Zuckerman and Mike McGlone to reflect on the highs and lows of 2021.
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News Roundup of 2021: Bitcoin, Dog Coins, El Salvador
CoinMarketCap's content czar Molly Jane Zuckerman joins us for a look back at some of the biggest headlines of 2021.
With Bitcoin managing to hit highs of $69,000 this year — and continuing to hover around $50,000 — she argues that some crypto investors are ungrateful, and have lost sight of how far the industry has come this year.
We also reflect on the impact that Elon Musk has had on the crypto markets. He caused a stir by adding the #bitcoin hashtag to his Twitter bio, and announcing that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion of BTC. Although the electric vehicle maker initially allowed Bitcoin to be used as a payment method, it embarked on a sensational U-turn over environmental concerns. Did this turn Musk from a crypto hero to a villain — and is there any chance of Tesla enabling BTC transactions in 2022?
Molly Jane also reveals exclusive CoinMarketCap data that reveals the most popular dog-themed coins of 2021 — surprisingly, Dogecoin wasn't at the top of this list despite witnessing a dramatic 15,000% surge between January and May.
Plus… how successful was El Salvador's rollout of Bitcoin as legal tender? Almost four months on, Connor and Molly Jane reflect on the country's achievements — and what could have gone better.
Elsewhere in our jam-packed discussion, we talk about the hoax that targeted Walmart and Litecoin, the death of John McAfee, and the dramatic collapse of the Squid Game token.
'I'd Give Ethereum an A, and Bitcoin a C+'
Bloomberg Intelligence's senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone — who has been monitoring the crypto markets closely — also joins us to assess how major coins have performed over the past 12 months. Giving Ethereum and A and Bitcoin a C+, he added:
"The biggest story to me has been the massive adoption and utilization of Ethereum in terms of NFTs and crypto dollars. It's part of the whole DeFi and fintech revolution."
Although Tesla and MicroStrategy have been early adopters when it comes to holding Bitcoin as a reserve asset, McGlone thinks institutional adoption fell behind expectations in 2021 — but it's "happening slowly."
Back in December 2020, McGlone released an outlook setting out his forecast for the crypto markets in 2021. He correctly predicted that Bitcoin would hit a $1 trillion market cap this year — but had said "the $500 to $700 range would define Ether in 2021." Fast forward to now, and November saw an all-time high of $4,891.70. Was there anything else that took him by surprise?
He describes ETH's outperformance as "profound and significant" — and adds that he never thought that the dollar would achieve such dominance in the stablecoin market. And reflecting on Bitcoin's fall from $64,000 to $30,000 in the first half of the year, McGlone added:
"I was not more cautious before the correction … did not expect the 50% correction to happen that quickly. I didn't think it'd get much below $40,000."
McGlone said he fully expected the recovery that followed, explaining:
"That's a key thing to remember about the cryptos. They are the most speculative risk-on assets on the planet, and there's so much leverage. There's so much speculation, so much excess in this space. You gotta flush it out once in a while."
And while digital assets have endured flash crashes in 2021, McGlone points out that the S&P 500 hasn't had a correction of more than 10% since bottoming out at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.
So… what about Dogecoin and SHIBA INU, then?
"Speculation machines. DOGE's initial peak was around April. And then SHIBA INU, the last peak was late October. They're great signs of excesses in the market — when they peak, everything collapses or drops, and that's what happened. I called SHIBA INU a pure, perfect speculation machine until it isn't — at some point, it's gonna plunge… and it did. I don't expect those highs again … They're good indicators for the overall market when silly things go up and they get to the top 10 of all cryptocurrencies — that's a warning."
