After a tremendously positive January for Bitcoin and crypto in terms of price movement, February has brought drama in the US, in the shape of what many interpret as hostile regulatory manoeuvres by the SEC.
There was a temporary dip in prices while these events dominated crypto headlines and caused a stir, but the price of Bitcoin bounced back sharply to briefly touch eight-month highs, with the rest of crypto following a similar upward path.
On top of that, even as the stage is laid out for regulatory confrontation, the mood in the crypto space is unmistakably upbeat. One positive reading of the battle over regulation is that it had to occur sooner or later, and with crypto now in a more established position than ever before, it has a reasonably strong foundation from which to defend itself. What’s more, the very fact that regulator interest is intensifying indicates that crypto is making an impact. After all, if crypto was inconsequential, it would simply be left alone on the fringes, but that is evidently not the case.
Aside from these regulatory issues, though, and feeding back into the elevated overall mood, there are several current niches within the crypto space that are looking buoyant and active, and which have the potential to grow significantly if this year sees prolonged positivity in the crypto markets.
NFT Finance
If 2020 brought DeFi summer, could a similar event unfold sometime in the future, but with NFTs at its core? That’s a speculative suggestion, but it’s not out of the question, as development increases and use grows around platforms that bring together NFTs and decentralized finance.
One problem with NFTs from a finance and trading point of view (rather than an art and design perspective) is that they are so illiquid. However, protocols such as BendDAO, JPEG’d, Pine Protocol and Drops are using peer-to-protocol mechanisms to unlock liquidity, NFTperp is a perpetual futures DEX centered around NFTs, and the likes of NFTfi and Arcade enable more straightforward peer-to-peer lending.
NFT markets are currently enjoying a welcome injection of liquidity, thanks to the Blur marketplace airdropping around $400 million worth of tokens (at current prices) to its users, a stimulus that is fueling an uptick in activity across the NFT landscape, and could, in turn, benefit NFT finance protocols.
Bitcoin Ordinals
This month there has been an explosion of interest in Ordinals, which are a way of inscribing unique, unalterable…
