cryptonews.com
The claims were made in a report from Activate Consulting, in its annual Technology and Media Outlook, which it calls “a comprehensive report on the state of the internet, technology, media and entertainment industries.”
The report was presented at the Wall Street Journal Tech Live Conference, and its authors predicted that in 2022:
“Consumers will move from buying cryptocurrency for investment to using cryptocurrencies for payments and transfers.”
They also predicted a productive 2022 for altcoins markets, writing that “although bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) dominate, innovation will take place in altcoins” and added that “crypto will power a broad set of sectors including e-commerce, video gaming and data.”
The report’s authors quizzed some 4,000 American adults aged over 18, and found that while 10% said they had never heard of crypto and the majority (44%) said they had no interest in tokens, 22% had already made coin purchases and almost a quarter had had their interest piqued in the past year.
Almost half said they were worried crypto was “not safe,” while over a third said they did not understand crypto. Volatility was a concern for 31% of respondents.
Most of those who had experience with crypto were traders (17%), but 12% said they had used it for remittance purposes. And 5% said they had mined coins, with just 1% staking their coins.
Although the report’s authors stopped short of predicting which altcoins they thought might experience growth in 2022, they listed eight altcoins and their various strong points, as well as 12-month growth figures. Standout growth was most evident in the case of dogecoin (DOGE), with x83.7, solana (SOL), with x45.8, and cardano (ADA) with x23.8.
The authors claimed that the “biggest barrier” for crypto “institutions” would be “regulatory compliance and uncertainty.”
They pointed out that in the USA, politicians were “currently debating and writing a regulatory framework for crypto,” while their counterparts in China were “actively trying to stifle and ban crypto as an existential monetary threat.”
There was better news for European firms, though. The continent, Activate claimed, is now “leading the world in fostering an ecosystem of innovation for crypto.”
And the consultant also looked at the picture for conventional crypto exchanges and their decentralized rivals, decentralized exchanges (DEXes).
They noted that as of September 2021 data, centralized exchanges still occupy the lion’s share of the market, accounting for almost 98% of crypto global daily trading volume.
The authors explained that larger platforms were launching “new financial products and services” such as lending, but were “facing regulatory scrutiny and pushback,” adding:
“Centralized exchanges offer consumers trust in an organization but are criticized for being against the decentralized nature of crypto as a central authority.”
DEXes, meanwhile, “are more difficult to regulate” due to their lack of a central controlling body and have thus “have largely avoided regulatory enforcement.” As a result, the authors noted, such platforms “offer more innovative services” and “are true to the decentralized ethos of the crypto community.”