Why DeFi’s trillion-dollar valuation projections may be more than just that

Alex Tapscott of Ninepoint Partners recently estimated that DeFi valuation could skyrocket next year in an interview. He said,

“That value today is, depending on who you ask, US$100 to US$200 billion. I think the higher number is more accurate.”

2021 was high on DeFi

He also added that “that’s a pretty conservative estimate.” Now, we can say that DeFi had a great year in 2021. In fact, the crypto-market cap also soared to an all-time high of $3 trillion during the year.

That being said, Vijay Ayyar, Vice President of Corporate Development and Global Expansion at Luno told CNBC recently that “2022 will be a big year on the regulatory front, no doubt.”

What’s more, a local report also projected that the cryptocurrency industry is planning to spend 2022 lobbying “Congress and regulators” for legislative clarity on crypto.

Kristin Smith, Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, for instance, told Roll Call that “it’s going to be a much different game next year.”

Some time back, the Bank for International Settlements had raised concerns around DeFi’s “decentralization illusion.” As one of the most lucrative segments of the crypto-space, regulators globally are trying to bring the vertical under their purview.

Having said that, Tapscott also predicts that DeFi users by the end of next year can be somewhere around 50 million. He said,

“Today, the number of DeFi users is around 3 million. Last year it was a couple hundred thousand, so pretty fair to assume that at the current rate of growth, we could get to 30 million, maybe even 50 million by the end of 2022.”

Metaverse is a big bet next year

On the back of DeFi’s growth, the executive also sees stablecoins and NFTs ‘anchoring the metaverse.’

“NFTs are going to go from something that we think of as primarily cultural assets, as art and collectibles, to a building block of a digital identity, which will help to anchor the metaverse as a way for individuals to have a persistent sovereign identity that they can take with them in the internet along with their digital goods.”

It’s no wonder then that a report has argued that 2022 will be the year when companies will be diving deeper into the metaverse. Tapscott believes that moving forward “stablecoins are going to move from being assets that are used primarily in the crypto world as a settlement layer for trades and a medium of exchange in that universe to something that’s widely used by people outside.”

Having said that, it is worth noting that recently, a piece of virtual land was sold for millions on Decentraland and Axie Infinity while being exchanged for crypto.

In this regard, he concluded by stating,

“A lot of that growth is going to be driven by their integration into big payments networks like MasterCard and Visa.”