Year In Retrospect: Crypto Growth And Adoption in 2021

Indeed, 2021 has been a revolutionary year in the crypto space. The crypto space recorded significant growth in its market volume as cryptocurrencies received more traction with more people across Africa and across the world leaning towards crypto adoption. DeFi and NFTs were not left behind in the race as more people learned about NFTs, purchased NFTs, and led several DeFi projects.

Yellow Card was at the forefront of this all, expanding the Yellow Card horizon and upping its security measures to ensure that Africans from across the globe can easily use cryptocurrencies while remaining confident in the safety of their assets. That’s not all; this year, Yellow Card was able to broaden its reach as a Pan African country and expanded to several African nations to pursue its mission in bringing financial inclusion to all.

In 2021, the crypto space indeed recorded massive success and achieved several milestones. Let’s review some of the highlights of 2021:

January 1st - Bitcoin commences the year with a price of $29,374.15 with Ethereum at $730.37

January 7th - Bitcoin skyrocketed past the $40,000 benchmark and DOT, the native token of the Polkadot network became the fourth-ranked crypto after setting an ATH of $19.24

January 11th - Yellow Card launched its VIP program and its new web app

January 19th - ETH reaches an ATH of $1,438.30

January 26th - DeFi market cap valued at $29 billion

February 1st - Tesla purchases $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and BTC hits an ATH of $48k

March 9th - Bitcoin's market cap jumps past $1 trillion

April 14th - Bitcoin hits Ath of $64k and DOGE becomes 10th largest crypto in the market as its market cap soared above $33 million

April 15th - Ether soared above $2,200 after Berlin hard fork

April 19th - Dogecoin replaced XRP as 4th largest cryptocurrency

April 20th - Fans celeberate Dogecoin day

April 23rd - Ether set a new record as it hits an ATH of $2,645.14.

April 29th - DeFi Industry is valued at $100 billion

May 6th - Ethereum reached an ATH of $3,607.76 and Vitalik Buterin, who had about 333,500 Ethereum became a billionaire

May 12th - Tesla recalls the decision to accept bitcoin as payment because of environmental concerns

May 17th - Vitalik Buterin burns $6billion worth of SHIB Tokens

May 24th - Bitcoin Mining Council is founded to take a stand against hostile bitcoin mining critics

June 9th - Yellow Card launched Yellow Card Academy, an easy to learn guide on crypto, blockchain, and other financial related topics

August 4th - Ethreum's London Fork is launched to roll out five Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIPs) in the wake of the network upgrade Ethereum 2.0. Uruguayan Law Maker also proposes crypto adoption Bill for bitcoin to be accepted as payment

August 16th - Cardano becomes the third-largest cryptocurrency, and the total market cap of cryptocurrencies tops $2 trillion.

September 7th - El Salvador adopts bitcoin as legal tender despite resistance from IMF.

September 9th - Ukraine adopts a bill that recognises cryptocurrencies as an asset.

September 27th - Cuba passes a bill that recognises and works towards the regulation of cryptocurrencies.

September 27th - Africa's fastest-growing crypto exchange, Yellow Card, raises $15M Series A Funding to promote crypto expansion and adoption in African nations.

October 19th - Proshares launch first bitcoin ETF

October 25th - Nigeria becomes first African nation to launch a CBDC

October 28th - Facebook changes its name to Meta and announced support for NFTs

October 29th - MicroStrategy successfully acquires bitcoin holdings of over $7billion

November 3rd - ETH Soars to a New ATH of $4600 and Solana Replaces Cardano as 5th-Largest Coin

November 10th - Yellow Card launches in Malawi as Bitcoin soars to a new ATH of $68,789 while Ethereum attains an ATH of $4,865

November 14th - Bitcoin Update Taproot is activated to offer developers a more diverse platform to ideate and improve bitcoin's limitations.

December 13th - Tesla Accepts Dogecoin as payment for Tesla merch

December 14th - Pepsi launches "Genesis Mic Drop Collection" NFTs to celebrate its founding year, 1893

December 21st - El Salvador buys 21BTC to celebrate "final 21st day of the year 21 of the twenty-first century" and the scarcity of Bitcoin, which is restricted to 21 million units,