It's hard to believe, but we're almost halfway through December, and that means 2021 is quickly coming to an end. It's been an up and down roller coaster in terms of the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets. The year started with a bang in terms of prices, and this led to people making huge price predictions at the end of the year. Unfortunately, at the time of writing we have not come close to those numbers, but it was a very successful year nonetheless. Just a year ago, bitcoin was still heading towards its previous all-time high, which was still at $20,000, and ethereum was around $700. This means that it has been a very profitable year for anyone who has invested in cryptocurrency for at least a year. But it can be very easy to get lost in the noise, in the current round of FUD or market sentiment. That's why the famous crypto phrase "when in doubt, just put it down" is so important. A problem that many of us deal with is that we want everything to happen very quickly. We want the price to go to the moon. We want mass adoption. We also want more companies and countries to accept bitcoin or cryptocurrency. This will not happen immediately and we all need to have a little patience. So today let's review and go through 2021 in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency. It's been a much more monumental year than most realize. We want mass adoption. We also want more companies and countries to accept bitcoin or cryptocurrency. This will not happen immediately and we all need to have a little patience. So today let's review and go through 2021 in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency. It's been a much more monumental year than most realize. We want mass adoption. We also want more companies and countries to accept bitcoin or cryptocurrency. This will not happen immediately and we all need to have a little patience. So today let's review and go through 2021 in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency. It's been a much more monumental year than most realize.


Bitcoin overcomes all-time highs and passes 60 thousand dollars
Although technically Bitcoin broke its previous high in December 2020, but it continued to go higher, setting new benchmarks. Many of you reading this article are probably new to crypto and didn't live through the bear market of 2018. There was a lot of doubt as to whether Bitcoin would ever be able to recover. Was it just a balloon or a FAD? I think most of us now realize that's not the case, but when prices drop by 80% or more, it can be hard to keep a positive mindset. When Bitcoin made a new all-time high, it was redemption for so many people who believed in it during those dark years. And then it continued to rise. This gave credence to all the speculation about what Bitcoin could potentially become and how there could be hyper-Bitcoinization one day.
Tesla buys Bitcoin
This was the blow that hurt the whole world and sent the price of Bitcoin to new heights. While it wasn't the first company to buy Bitcoin and put it on its balance sheet. Microstrategy and Square did this in 2020. But these companies are not on the same level as Tesla and have perhaps the most powerful CEO in Elon Musk. It was believed that this was only the beginning. This purchase of Tesla would lead other companies to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet like Apple, Amazon, etc. While that hasn't happened yet, it's still early days. These things take time.
THE SAME coins
While Bitcoin was just starting to cool off in the first half of the year, coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inc gained popularity. If there was a meme that could go along with the coin, or if there were popular influencers selling it, those coins were pumped in droves. I have always maintained the position that I am not a fan of meme coins, I prefer to invest in the coins I believe in for the long term. But I openly admit that there is money to be made in this market. One could argue that fiat currency itself is a meme. While I still have my doubts about the future of these coins, I don't think we've heard the last of them. Meme coins went mainstream and were the talk of the town.
NFT
We all thought that Meme coins would be the biggest hype movement of the year, especially with retail investors, but then the NFT got rocked. NFTs were sold for millions of dollars and this is just the beginning. The potential market for NFTs is limitless, memorabilia, video game items, sports and concert tickets, trading cards, art, avatars and the list goes on. If you had any doubts about the potential future of NFTs, those doubts should have been shattered when Facebook went all-in. Changing their name from Facebook to Meta and putting all their resources into building the Metaverse. Which you can probably already guess will involve a lot of NFTs. This will be the future.
Ethereum New All-Time High and the Emergence of Rivals
Ethereum is potentially the most flexible and ambitious blockchain. It has the potential to do anything you dream of with it. That being said, Ethereum is also putting EIP 1559 into action, and ETH 2 is getting closer and closer. All this led to the rise in the price of Ethereum and even to the profit of Bitcoin. That talk of Ethereum potentially eclipsing Bitcoin in terms of market cap has also started to pick up steam. Since the summer, the market is not talking about bitcoin, but about ethereum, and also about its competitors. Because there is so much demand for using ethereum, the fees have grown to unbearable amounts. This makes the long wait for ETH 2 and the promise of lower fees much harder to wait for. This gave a chance to ETH's rivals and they took advantage of it and grew in popularity. Coins like Solana, Avalanche and Luna have done very well recently. Although I think ETH is here to stay and will most likely always be the best blockchain for smart contracts. But I think there is room for more than one.
The first party buys Bitcoin
The second shock to the world was when El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as its legal tender. They will use Bitcoin Lightning for payments and this will be the first real test of this second layer of Bitcoin. It aimed to make everyday use of blockchain for payments like coffee and so on viable. Although there were some hiccups, they are all to be expected and it was a great success. The world is watching, and El Salvador will definitely not be the last country to do so. The president also announced plans to build the first Bitcoin city and it will be a very interesting endeavor to watch. For those who have been hoping for cryptocurrency to go mainstream, this is what we've all been waiting for.
Bitcoin FUD
There were a lot of positives this year, but there was also a lot of FUD to deal with as well. I've said this many times over the year, but a lot of this FUD news in previous years would have spelled the end of the bull market and sent us straight into a multi-year bear market. Things like bitcoin mining energy FUD, China banning bitcoin and then the great Chinese mining exodus, US regulation FUD, infrastructure bill FUD, Evergrande default FUD, BTC double spend FUD, El Salvador FUD and the list goes on. But Bitcoin has survived each and lives to fight another day.
These are just some of the things that happened in 2021 and there are many huge events that I haven't even mentioned. The constant onslaught of news in this market is impossible for just one person to keep up with. I think it's been an amazing year for bitcoin and cryptocurrency and I never imagined a country would adopt bitcoin so early in the game. I was disappointed that other major companies didn't adopt Bitcoin as I thought they would after the Tesla announcement. But I think that will happen in time. A lot of people will be disappointed that we haven't hit those huge price milestones as well. Naturally, I would also like to reach them. But that too will happen in time. We are all in this for the long haul and must be patient.