✨ DeFi Shined in a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Year in Crypto Markets

Hello Defiers! Welcome to the first of our special edition newsletters chronicling the best, worst, and strangest events in DeFi in 2021.

For the next week, we’ll be counting down to New Year’s Day with a load of special content. We have Big Stories of 2021, Top Defiers of 2021, Worst Rug Pulls, Best Airdrops, and much more.

Today we open things up with a review of the crypto markets in 2021, and what to expect in 2022. Enjoy!

DeFi 2021

• DeFi Shined in a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Year in Crypto Markets
• Got Bear Market Blues? Read This

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DeFi 2021

✨ DeFi Shined in a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Year in Crypto Markets

This article is part of our Year in Review series.

MARKET CAP Well that was insane. The crypto markets in 2021 set a new standard for volatility, wealth creation, and outright wackiness. We watched agog as the market cap for crypto topped $3T.

JOKE TOKENS We were equally astounded to see doggie tokens and joke tokens and gaming tokens capture the imagination of investors. And then there was Elon Musk creating and vaporizing billions of dollars in value at the drop of his latest whimsical tweet.

AGILITY Yet underneath the madness an orderly narrative unfolded, and it was all about DeFi. In a year when Ethereum and its ecosystem(s) demonstrated its utility and agility, the sector’s market value climbed more than 600%, to $163B, and total value locked (TVL) multiplied 12 times to $245B.

MARKET DARLING Just look at some of the numbers from 12 months ago. On Jan. 1, 2021, ETH was trading at only $738 compared to its current price of $4,091. A year ago Uniswap’s market cap was a tidy $1B, and now it’s almost $9B. And Axie Infinity, a blockchain game, became a market darling this summer and its token, AXS, multiplied more than 170 times in value. It ushered in a whole new category in crypto — GameFi.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

😧 Got Bear Market Blues? Read This

This article is part of our Year in Review series.

VIBE Is a bear market a foregone conclusion? That’s the vibe as we head into the new year. And there’s little doubt why — the December selloff has stung and the market is confronting a litany of challenges.

INFLATION For starters, the crypto market has lost a fifth of its value since peaking in November. Investors have been shedding risk in the face of the Omicron outbreak and central banks’ moves to fight soaring inflation and taper government support for their respective economies. (Stock markets in the U.S., Europe, and Asia have also declined in the fourth quarter).

CRACKDOWN At the same time, regulators such as Gary Gensler at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Janet Yellen at the U.S. Department of the Treasury seem determined to crack down on crypto platforms and stablecoins. This comes on the heels of the legislation that passed this summer requiring crypto ventures in the U.S. to collect and report tax data for their clients, a costly chore many projects are ill-equipped to execute.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

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📺 The Defiant Weekly: The Future of DeFi

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Samuel Haig, DeFiDad, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader, and Camila Russo. Videos are produced by Robin Schmidt, Alp Gasimov and Daniel Flynn. Podcast is led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr)