Crypto Winners And Losers of the Year 2019

Though the cryptocurrency industry has faced many crests and troughs, 2019 is the year of surprises revealed throughout. The bear market of 2018 forced market analysts to call it the year of regulatory estimation.

The year 2019 also proved to be the friendly year for the tech giants, such as Facebook left the crypto banning idea behind and joined the team of the people who want to embrace the new tech.

Increasing worldly events like the trade war between China and the US have moved the investors' thoughts to the cryptocurrencies' utility such as Bitcoin. Still many things to be done even as US Securities and Exchange Commission moves on to refuse every Bitcoin ETF proposals.

As the year is coming towards wrap up, here is a glance over the corporates and crypto plots that struggled to be topper in 2019, and those who got unsuccessful to turn the year in their favour.

The Winners

Bitcoin's Significant Growth

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies along with the blockchain industry enjoyed its tenth anniversary as proof of the resilience of Satoshi Nakamoto's creation. Nonetheless, earlier in 2019, the crypto industry was healing from last crypto winter of 2018.

Luckily, Bitcoin, started the year with a bullish run, as a result, the price surged nearly 11% higher in the first quarter of the year. The co-establisher of Morgan Creek Digital Asset Management company, Anthony Pompliano shared his words:

"Bitcoin’s price is up significantly in 2019 [as there are] more buyers than sellers on a net basis this year.”

In the first half of the year, market cap surged throughout, Bitcoin gained 165% increase and its price flew up to $10,888, moreover, Bitcoin's market supremacy surged up to 65%.

Pompliano told about the factors that accelerated Bitcoin's growth:

“The biggest moments probably revolve around the announcement of Libra and the subsequent reactions, both positive and negative, from various folks across the traditional and cryptocurrency markets.”

In the third quarter of the wrapping year, Bitcoin faced bearish trend and its price declined as 100 billion was lost in market cap. Bitcoin ended the quarter with the least amount of loss. Also, its market supremacy surged by 5.4%. Bitcoin's progress has been great so far. Bobby Lee, the CEO at Ballet Crypto wallet, stated that many major technological advancements have been fruitful for Bitcoin:

“2019 was a great year for Bitcoin bulls because of the advances in the open-source ecosystem. Lightning Network is increasing Bitcoin’s transaction capacity, wallets with built-in, user-friendly features (Wasabi, Samourai) are improving privacy.”

Constant Expansion of Coinbase

In the past, Coinbase maintained a good name for employing a rather careful plan for supporting coins. This year, the major exchange Binance confronted a high level of security breaches, that led it to lost thousands of Bitcoin. Still, Coinbase turned out to be the safest and secure platform.

However, the firm was largely inspected by Twitter users over its acquisition of Neutrino-a young company that gathers transactional records of cryptocurrency through blockchain.

However, Coinbase's step of taking over Neutrino is part of its aim to add all the assets while complying with the laws. Alongside the acquisition of Neutrino, Coinbase has increased the listed cryptocurrencies on its exchange.

In May 2019, the firm expanded its roots to many countries, more than 100 while creating its stablecoin, which is now available in approx 85 countries. Comparatively, this year turned out to be great for the Coinbase more than 2018. This huge expansion made it a great competitor for leading exchanges such as Binance.

The Losers

Launching of Libra in 2020

Launching of facebook's Libra has been the major issue for the year 2019. After revealing the idea of proposing Libra, the U.S regulators put some regulatory concerns on the table regarding it. The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg had to face many hearings on this issue.

As per the project's proposal, Libra's aim is "to enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers millions of people."

Libra's white paper moreover, proclaims that it will use " a fresh decentralized blockchain, a low volatility cryptocurrency, and a smart contract forum" to boost nearly 1.7 billion unbanked people. This will be gained by using Facebook's social apps, WhatsApp and Messenger and a digital wallet for Libra, Calibra.

In spite of having a good aim to boost the unbanked, the libra project has been shadowed by the huge inspection from regulators. Also, it had to face some internal concerns. Ballet Wallet's Lee expressed his views regarding the whole scenario:

“Governments will change their stance because they will come to understand that they can’t control or stop Bitcoin, and they will prefer to have their citizens use centralized corporate coins that can easily be regulated, monitored, and pegged to fiat currency.”

The U.S. Congress has asked Facebook to stop more developments of the project, and critics now see that the project will not be developed completely without Government's grant. Various European nations have also come out against the Libra cryptocurrency. Besides, China announced this year to start its own stablecoin, a national central bank digital currency.

Bitcoin ETF's Constant Rejection

Although, U.S lawmakers have always opened a door for the possibility to grant Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the future, still, evert solo try to license a Bitcoin ETF has got failed. This year in October, Bitwise Asset Management submitted an ETF proposal was rejected by the Securities and Exchange Commission for not complying with applicable laws.

In fact, entirely all the Bitcoin ETF proposals have been rejected due to scam activities and market manipulation. The CEO of the Findora Fintech Toolkit provider, Charles Lu stated:

"For a Bitcoin ETF proposal to gain SEC approval, the sponsor will need to prove that real price discovery is happening as opposed to market manipulations.”

Overall, 2019 has been significant for the growth of the crypto industry. It would be exciting to see whether the Libra project will be succeeded to launch with complete success in 2020. It would not be wrong to say that 2020 might get unpredictable for the crypto world.