Genesis’ Noelle Acheson on crypto growth in 2022

Crypto saw astonishing institutional growth in 2021, but Genesis’ Noelle Acheson believes adoption is set to accelerate over the next year.

Noelle Acheson, the head of Market Insights at Genesis Global Trading, expects the next twelve months to see a continuation of institutional growth within the crypto space.

She said this while speaking to Joe Kernen during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

When asked to predict what she thinks will happen in the crypto space next year- whether it be SEC finally approving a spot Bitcoin ETF, major regulatory actions from across the globe, or institutional adoption- she noted that no one would for sure know (what will happen).

However, she says 2021 was very “interesting” and that the industry expects a continuation of institutional growth as seen over the past year.

“We are seeing strong signs of that accelerating over the next year,” she said, adding that these could be direct investments into crypto or through investments into companies building the crypto market’s infrastructure.

3 new unicorns every month!

Acheson says that the crypto space has 65 unicorns, which are startup companies whose market valuation is above $1 billion. She noted that 2021 alone saw 40 crypto-focused companies hit unicorn status, with an average of three new firms hitting the billion-dollar valuation every month.

According to her, such astonishing growth can only lead to more interest in crypto [and blockchain technology]. She says the growth is likely to accelerate interest even as more money flows into the industry.

On “risky but higher returns’ tokens

Acheson also talked about institutional interest and its visibility in how investment managers are choosing to diversify into crypto.

The former managing director of research at Coindesk told CNBC that the past year saw more institutions add crypto to their portfolios, but more interesting was the move for many of them to go for digital assets outside of the top two in Bitcoin and Ethereum.

She notes that market maturity now offers investors room for choice, which has increasingly seen investors go for risky, but potentially higher returns altcoins. 

These are tokens that represent new technological advancements in the crypto space, which, though she did not mention, would include decentralised finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The metaverse and Web 3.0 tokens are also gaining a lot of traction going into 2022.

The exodus of Bitcoin miners out of China

Acheson also talked about Bitcoin mining and China’s crackdown that saw an exodus of miners into other regions, many of them to the US. She says this was a big development, but adds that it might just have benefited Bitcoin miners in terms of access to financing.

“One of the big developments over the past 12 months was the migration of #bitcoin mining from China. A lot of that went to the United States,” says @NoelleInMadrid. “Even more significantly for the bitcoin market directly is the access this gives bitcoin miners to financing.” pic.twitter.com/DqvjoKrxf0

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) December 28, 2021