 The crypto industry bid farewell to 2020 with flying colors. Amidst the tumult of this unprecedented time in history, the digital asset space seems to have proven its resilience. We are Cointelegraph, the face of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Our writers, editors, and stories are the pulse that drives the crypto narrative. Here's what we have to say about the future of crypto in 2021. Think that in 2021… I think there's a lot of other players. So that's another narrative that I'm expecting to change if it hasn't already. Watch this video, tell us your own thoughts in the comments, and don't forget to share and subscribe. First, what current crypto trends will continue in 2021? So I think this trend that we've seen in 2020 of the big institutionalization of cryptocurrency, the involvement of major corporations, such as PayPal, Square, MicroStrategy, I think you're going to see more and broader adoption continue, potentially at an exponential pace of blockchain and cryptocurrency. I think that we are in 2020 going into 2021 in the place that the internet maybe was in the late 80s, early 90s, where there was a community of people that were really passionate about tech, networking, etc., that knew about this and were working on it. But the vast majority of regular people were not 100% sure what it was yet, or how it worked, or why it was important. I think it's going to take maybe only one, let's say one or two projects to really break into the mainstream, prove that they can make money, that they can shake the game up to get a lot of corporate FOMO, fear of missing out, that is. And I think that in 2021, I don't know if it'll be the year that changes everything, but I think it'll be a year that further progresses the mainstreamization, as I say, of cryptocurrency. So 2020 was a watershed year in the cryptocurrency market and for Bitcoin in particular. 2020 was the year where the digital gold narrative finally went mainstream. And a lot of these major institutions started to realize the potential of Bitcoin as a macro strategy, as a macro hedge against inflation. I know many of us have been following this narrative for many years. We've seen the writing on the wall. I know I've been personally monitoring institutional adoption for several years. And I remember back in 2018, when backed launch, and I was like, this is it. The institutions are coming. They're here. They're going to blow the roof out of Bitcoin's price. It didn't quite materialize that way back in 2018. But 2020 shocked me by the sheer magnitude by which major institutions and companies adopted Bitcoin strategically. I mean, I can just go through a laundry list, right? You had Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Druckenmiller. You have Mass Mutual. You have Ruffer. You have Square. You have PayPal. You have grayscale increasing their holdings, micro strategy. And then you got the major banks that have completely flipped the script on Bitcoin. JPMortigan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, BlackRock have all flipped the script and turned positive on Bitcoin. And all of them are talking about Bitcoin as a haven asset. It really is startling for me as somebody who's been in the space for a long time to see how quickly that narrative changed in 2020. And I expect that to continue to 2021. So the biggest theme for me into 2021 is the digital gold narrative. More investors, more companies, major and small, are going to realize that they're going to need an asset like Bitcoin to hedge against inflation. The monetary policy that we're seeing today, we haven't seen before. At the height of the 2008, 2009 crisis, we didn't see the types of monetary policy, the extent that we're seeing today. And all of this is going to lead to significant devaluation of the US dollar. As that happens, you're going to see more S&P 500 companies, in my opinion, adopt Bitcoin. So if you're going to ask me what I think is going to happen in 2020, or the major theme that I'm looking at, regardless of sector, is going to be the adoption trend among the major companies in the S&P 500 and elsewhere. So for me, in conjunction to that, you're also going to see the continued rise of Ethereum, because a lot of these companies, when they realize that PayPal and Grayscale are buying up all the newly mined Bitcoin every day, they're going to go to another asset. And I think it's going to be Ethereum. Now, the narrative around Ethereum, I also think is going to change or is changed getting into 2021. Nobody really talks about the Ethereum killer anymore, because that narrative doesn't really hold much water. I expect that narrative to die, if it hasn't already. Everyone now is talking about which protocols, which smart contract platforms can coexist alongside Ethereum, because the market's going to explode. It's going to be big. There's going to be a lot of potential in this market. What are some of the different protocols that can also eat away at Ethereum's market share? So you're talking about now protocols that are going to eat away at Ethereum's market share, as opposed to kill Ethereum. So that's another narrative that I'm expecting to change, if it hasn't already, as we head into the new year and beyond. Well, here in Brazil, we had a year, a good year for crypto and blockchain markets. We saw many initiatives from the government adopting blockchain on notary offices, for example, and other solutions. So this was very important. I think the Brazilian government will improve its adoption on blockchain. And on crypto markets, we saw some important initiatives also. We had a partnership between the biggest exchange in Brazil, Mercado Bitcoin, and a traditional football club, which is Vasco da Gama. They launched a token, and I think we will have more tokenization of assets and securities in Brazil also. So far, 2021, I also think that we will see Bitcoin ETF, more big techs and big companies adopting Bitcoin payments, and also investing on Bitcoin on the next year. DeFi, I think DeFi gained a lot of steam in 2020, and I think there's a lot of room to go there. Bitcoin's price up trend. Hopefully, we haven't topped yet. Institutions buying Bitcoin is another one. I think there's a lot of other players that could get into the game, a lot of money that could come in, and regulation as well. In terms of crypto and blockchain trends and regulations, I think we're definitely going to see more major financial institutions adopting Bitcoin as a reserve asset, or at least investing it in some way. I think there's, with the incoming and Biden administration, we're definitely going to see some volatility just caused by differences in regulatory policy, particularly with the SEC and everything that's going on with Ripple, whether that's XRP, whether it's identified as a security. Hopefully, we'll see fewer examples of these pump and dump schemes just by different projects and tokens fueled by social media and crypto news outlets. First of all, it can always get worse. COVID was terrible, and I'm sure that a lot of you lost their loved ones, or maybe you were fearful for their lives. But it can always get worse, so keep that in mind. The second thing is that to be more positive, and now it is that doesn't mean that these events don't mean that the world has to change, or that there is new normal, that everything is different. I think that DeFi will definitely continue to exist and will continue to develop, and it's kind of one of the breakout trends of 2020 that I think is going to shape crypto distors for a while. Obviously, it's never quite as good as we hope, so I think that there's going to be a little bit of stumbling first, because right now in 2020, we saw this whole speculation mania and a lot of issues with the infrastructure as well, you know, the gas fees, it's basically impossible to use a DeFi protocol for an average person right now because it's just so expensive. And so, we need to kind of solve these issues, so I definitely wouldn't expect Ethereum to be kind of the only blockchain for, you know, scalability and smart contracts and stuff. At the same time, Ethereum is also having its own solutions for scalability being deployed right now, actually in 2020 months, so we're going to get better. So, there's going to be a very interesting battle of which solution will win, which was solution will have more users. Finally, there are a few trends in crypto that are kind of smaller. I think that, for example, options platforms, you know, derivatives are actually going to explode in 2021. We've seen a lot of growth, of course, but if you've ever actually used one of those, it's not really great. Like, for example, if it has to spread, it's huge. Liquidity is often small. But they are kind of great for speculation in many ways. So, I think that it's definitely going to be one of those very high growth industries within sectors within the crypto world. And I also believe that as we get into the scalability and stuff, stable coins are actually going to be very important. So, of course, you have what we have today, so you see and all that stuff. As we get more scalability for payments, and as we get maybe CBDCs as well, finally being rolled out, I expect that we may see a resurgence of cryptocurrency used for payments, especially in the form of stable coins. You know, I think that we're still kind of missing that app that, for example, uses cryptocurrency in the back end, but the end user does not know that they are actually using crypto. I think that the possibilities of using crypto on a scalable platform are endless. So, I think that this is going to be quite interesting for the average user, so to speak. I see two changes. First, the DeFi fever. With improvement of intoxication and increased market awareness of DeFi, it is hoped that in 2021, the popularity of DeFi will continue and more and more innovation will be derived. Second, we will keep winning small and more traditional forces, especially professional institutions during this market. Like great scale, it is definitely the real star in this year. Many of the verticals that took off in 2020 will continue to experience explosive growth. DeFi could sleepwalk through the next 11 months and still likely hit 100 billion in total value locked, and a quarter trillion is a real possibility. Likewise, NFTs will continue to seep into mainstream consciousness, and at least one major video game title will launch with NFT-backed item functionality right out of the box. Even social tokens will likely continue to do well despite being utterly worthless garbage. New trends that I'm excited about largely center on smart contracts taking over common real-world financial agreements, mortgages through Aave, parametric weather insurance, and experiments in tokenizing assets with tools like NFTs will gain significant traction. However, the development I'll be most excited about will be the ascendancy of DAOs. We've seen the world start to wake up to the power of decentralized ledgers and decentralized smart contract platforms, and the next step is a widespread understanding and appreciation for decentralized autonomous organizations. Many of the founders and core contributors working in DAOs that I've talked to believe them to be the future of how human organizations compose and advance themselves. In 2021, DAOs will out-compete their centralized counterparts in a variety of fields, and the wider community will increasingly demand decentralization at the governance layer as they currently do at the protocol layer. If 2020 was the year of DeFi, 2021 will be the year of the Dow. 2020 has shown us that decentralization can not only be a technological vision of the future, but also social and economic reality and necessity. What trends do you not expect to continue? So while I think that decentralized finance is here to stay, I think that it's going to, I think that the wild wild west days of DeFi may perhaps be dwindling slowly. I think the days of simply yield farming for the sake of yield farming with no real purpose other than generating more yield may be on its way out. I think that for DeFi to grow even larger, I think that it's going to become more standardized. I think that you're going to start to see insurance providers. You're going to start to see mainstream financial entities playing around with DeFi. I think you're already starting to see some DeFi platforms that are popped up that are now backed by big money, by more significant players in the financing world, perhaps even in mainstream finance. So DeFi will continue, but I think it's going to look just a little bit different. Hopefully the trend of Bitcoin going back below 10,000, there's kind of a running joke on Twitter about every time Bitcoin would go below 10,000 when it was around that mark, people would say, oh, this is the last time you can buy Bitcoin below 10,000 and kind of a running joke. So hopefully it's not a joke anymore. Hopefully it doesn't go below 10,000 anymore. I think that institutional adoption, so Bitcoin being traded by Wall Street, trading hedge funds essentially, I think that it's going to hit a snag because right now I feel like the adoption that we are finally seeing coming actually, it's going to go away together with the kind of risk-on environment we're seeing today in all markets essentially, which means that stock markets are at a multi-high, Tesla is clearly in a bubble. I mean, it's just a valid way too high for it to make any reasonable sense. And eventually this is going to stop. And when that does, I think Wall Street is actually going to lay off crypto for a bit because they can definitely be useful in certain aspects, but they're not useful on permissioned blockchains. You have to trust not to be corrupt because in that way we're at square one essentially. So yeah, I don't think that's going to continue 2021 in that case. I would say like the sale of E-March this year during a period with the pandemic going all crazy and the collapse of the micro-environment. Cryptocurrency will not spread in 2021. We're wishing and also believing that the world will return to a normal state and the panic sale of like the last one will not be repeated. What trends will we see in 2021 that we didn't see in 2020? One of the first things I can think is about Bitcoin mining in Brazil. We don't have a big market yet here, but I think in the next year we will see the government taking action and bringing companies to mine Bitcoin in Brazil. I think this will be a trend for the next year. And the other thing is that I can see the stock market more open for the crypto markets in the next year. So I hope that this market will have more products of investments here, national products, to invest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether or Ripple. So in 2020 DeFi was pretty complicated with all the yield farming and the meme coins and all the ways you can make profit. So I think we might see that simplified a little bit. I think some critical piece of technology, some new take on projects, some new blockchain is going to arise that just completely revolutionizes the space. As big of a claim as that is, like they said, the same thing about Ethereum and look where that is now. So hopefully all this will make good bullish news for crypto in the coming year. The things they say about Facebook's Libra or DM that currency is the domain of governments, all those things they say about Facebook's projects, it applies just as well to crypto. And the thing is that so far, Facebook is definitely much stronger than the crypto moon as a whole. So that's kind of why they've been focused on Libra. But I think that we're going to face this kind of challenge period where they will try to diminish or to kind of take control of the crypto ecosystem in some way. It's kind of like we've been flying below the radar for the most parts so far. But they think that the elites, government officials, they're not really going to appreciate that, appreciate it that much. Not saying that it will necessarily be sector breaking, but at the same time, I feel like we're going to have to stand through this test. We'll see where that leads us. Over time, we'll see more and more of these solutions. Some of them exist already, but I think that digital identities are going to be a big thing in the future. Maybe not exactly in 2021, but it's definitely going to be a kind of growing and growing adoption layer. Maybe Bitcoin go over $100,000. Yeah. What lessons have you learned this year? 2020 was a year of hard lessons. For example, I learned this year that working from home and being have to work from home are two very different things. But now we are looking at new hopeful promising numbers, 2021. So what I learned is that I love working for a decentralized company. I love the flexibility of being able to work wherever I want. I love working with people from all around the world. But what I learned is that it's not quite as fun during a pandemic when the entire city is shut down. I don't enjoy not having a real way to separate my professional and personal lives because my professional life is taking place in the same place as my personal life, because I can't go anywhere else to work, because everything's shut down. That part of it I'm not a huge fan of. Chaos is a ladder, that's the truth. This year, whether it is the crypto market, the micro environment, or us individual, or experienced many ups and downs. But as we come to the end of 2020, in retrospect, you know, we will find that there are always opportunities being side with crisis. So before we add 2021, I really want to say that in the face of unknown coins, we need to keep an optimistic attitude and rational thinking. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed the video, don't forget to like and subscribe. Stay with us.