Last year was a great one for crypto. Bitcoin hit a market cap of $894.7 billion by December 2021 and reached an all-time price high of around $69,000 in November. Binance Coin grew by about 1,300%, Solana by 400%, while Polkadot posted an outstanding growth rate of 240%.

This made us wonder: how will the big dogs fare in the year to come? We scoured the interwebs to bring you the low-down on what the experts are saying. Let’s stare deep into the crypto-ball together to discover what 2022 holds in store for our beloved digital currency.

 

Bitcoin (price at time of writing: $46,694)

If billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper is right, then Bitcoin will reach the $250,000 mark by the end of 2022 or perhaps by early 2023. He believes this will happen, despite the concerns around BTC’s high electricity mining consumption, because the currency should be more in use by then.

In his own words: “Give it about a year and a half and retailers will all be on Opennode [this is a Bitcoin payment processor], so everyone will accept Bitcoin.”

Other than Draper, Ali Mizani Osuki, CEO of FiCAS AG Swiss, reckons Bitcoin’s price could be between $200,000 and $300,000. Bloomberg has guessed closer to $400,000.

On the other side of the spectrum, Voyager Digital CEO Steve Ehrlich thinks BTC will only surpass $100,000. Carol Alexander, a finance professor at Sussex University, has predicted that it could actually sink as low as $10,000.

The thing is that in the space of the past few months, Bitcoin has dropped by around $20,000. Having said that, it tanked around this time the year before. Oh, and things could really get tricky the closer we get to mining BTC’s 21 million coins, so only time will truly tell.

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Ethereum (price at time of writing: $3,831)

Ethereum has been in the spotlight because of the incredible popularity of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), smart contracts, and Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs). Ethereum is also switching to a Proof of Stake and of course, they were second only to Bitcoin in terms of market cap.

Bloomberg’s Senior Commodity Strategist, Mike McGlone, feels that the cryptocurrency “appears on track for $5,000 with support around $4,000” while some overly optimistic pundits reckon it could see $7,000 by the end of the year.

Some people, like hedge fund manager Rahul Rai, believe Ethereum could overtake Bitcoin in the next 6 months. Seems a little far-fetched, considering the massive difference in price between the two cryptos, but Rai is a 24-year-old who just sold his business for $35 million. He must know something we don’t.

In an interview posted on Markets Insider, Rai said: “Ethereum is trying to power the rails of all global finance in the future, and that is a much bigger market if it does succeed. If the thesis plays out, then the market value is going to capture trillions of dollars in global activity, and that is a much bigger market than [what] Bitcoin’s going [towards]”.

 

Binance Coin (price at time of writing: $515)

BNB started 2021 at $37.33 and by November, it was trading at $628 – that’s a massive 1,582.29% increase! Speculation was rife that by the end of 2021, it would hit the $1,000-mark but that was most certainly not the case – it topped out at around $522.

Estimates now say that it will hover around that price point for a while and hit a possible $711 in June. By the end of 2022, the feeling is that it could close at around $650.

Solana (price at time of writing: $171)

Solana kicked off at $1.51 on 1 January 2021 and peaked at around $260 on 6 November, according to Coinbase.

SOL is expected to hit $300 by mid 2021, and around $470 by the end of that year. Other sources feel that the highest the coin could reasonably hit in 2022 would be $478.

 

Ripple (price at time of writing: $0.83)

Analysts at TradingBeasts feel that Ripple will land somewhere between $1.32 and $1.36 in 2022. WalletInvestor thinks that XRP will trade between $0.998 and $2.278 in 2022, and the highest prediction we’ve read puts XRP at $3.84.

Polkadot (price at time of writing: $30)

Sitting at a market cap of $32 billion, Polkadot has done well for itself since its first sale back in 2017.

Coin Price Forecast feels that the cryptocurrency could hit around $52 by June 2022 and top out at $72.39 by the end of the year. TheNewsCrypto believes it could reach a level of resistance at $55.50 and that we might see a reverse of the trend, which would mean that the price would fall back to around $10.40.

Change is the only constant in life

It’s anyone’s guess as to where the big hitters in the crypto world will land in 2022. But one thing’s for sure, cryptocurrencies are enjoying increasing favor. It’s going to be an exciting year in 2022 – we’re looking forward to seeing how this disruptive technology plays out!

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