2021 has brought us a lot of crypto hype stories to share. These pieces of evidence show how much the digital market has integrated with our lives.

More and more people starting to realize the potential of cryptocurrencies. That is why a lot of traders are jumping into the digital market, trying to make some fortune out of it. This has caused the crypto market to receive more attention than ever. Surely, the rising popularity of cryptocurrencies brought forth a lot of crypto hype stories, especially in 2021.

crypto hype stories

While unique and a little bit odd in some ways, these viral stories are proof that the existence of cryptocurrencies has grown bigger than everyone had expected. Here are some of the best crypto hype stories of 2021 in no particular order.

 

1. The Great Crypto Donation

One interesting thing about cryptocurrency is that there are so many uses of it. This technology can be used as a trading instrument, payment, and donation. In fact, there have been several stories of crypto donations last year alone. For example, Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home become one of the luckiest organizations to receive crypto donations. Generous donators managed to gather a whopping 26 ETH through this non-profit organization. That is one of the largest-ever cryptocurrency donations in Scottish history, helping the charity's pet food bank service to run through 2022.

Normally, these types of organizations held a fundraiser on an offline event. But due to the Coronavirus situation, that simply can't be done. Nicola Gunn, the director of development and external affairs at Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home, said that the rise of cryptocurrency has offered a new way for non-profit organizations to survive in the middle of pandemic. It was a part of the Crypto Giving Tuesday campaign, a fundraising program organized by For The Giving Block.

 

2. Benyamin Ahmed Success Story

The main reason why a lot of people want to invest in cryptocurrency is that they believe the industry has a much higher return than other instruments. So many people have tried, but countless have failed in their endeavors. With the rise of NFT and Metaverse, people have begun to try again. There are a lot of success stories with NFT, but the most remarkable one is Benyamin Ahmed. This 12-year-old boy from London made $400,000 by selling his own NFT collection. This unique event is certainly one of the most interesting crypto hype stories of 2021.

Benyamin Ahmed

Benyamin launched his first Minecraft-inspired NFT collection in 2021. His product called Minecraft Yee-Haa was made of pixelized avatars of Minecraft characters. In June, Benyamin began coding his second NFT collection, this time he took inspiration from a well-known whale meme image and a popular digital art style. He sold all of his collections through a popular NFT platform called OpenSea, where he earned in Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Following the success, Benyamin continues his journey in the world of NFT and managed to work on Non-Fungible Heroes, an NFT collection of comic book characters. This time he works side by side with a team of professional designers who worked at Marvel and Disney. The collection was released on September 19 and sold out in only 12 minutes with more than $5m in total sales.

 

3. Love on the Blockchain

There are so many uses of Blockchain, from regular use like a smart contract to holding holy matrimony. Yes, that's right. A couple did get married on the blockchain in 2021. This has yet to be one of the most creative uses of this technology.

The happy couple is Rebecca Rose and Peter Kacherginsky, who were employees of leading US-based crypto exchange Coinbase. Their marriage is more than unity as the story revealed how they used the Ethereum blockchain to become lawfully wedded. Rebecca Rose tweeted on April 3rd, announcing that the pair had tied the knot on March 14 in both physical and virtual worlds.

Blockchain wedding

To embody their dreams of getting married in a blockchain, Kacherginsky created the 2,218 line-long smart contracts on March 10. The contract cost 0.25 ETH to create, roughly $450 at the time. An hour after the contract was created, three more transactions were sent from Tabaat for an additional cost of 0.0048 ETH or $87, which means it cost them around $537 to tokenize a marriage contract.

The marriage itself consisted of the transfer of NFT rings from the contract to Rose and Kacherginsky. Then it took about 4 minutes for the contract to be validated by the Ethereum network and incurred $50 in miner fees.

 

4. Mr. Goxx the Trading Hamster

The thing about cryptocurrency is that there is always something unexpected happening. For example, a trading hamster named Mr. Goxx reportedly has a better portfolio compared to S&P 500 and Warren Buffett. Mr. Goxx would run in a decision wheel to his favorite cryptocurrency and then go through one of two tunnels: one for buy, one for sell. Surprisingly, he was very popular on several platforms, especially Twitch, where he would go live and make trading decisions. He even managed to catch the attention of the famous Elon Musk and got mentioned on The Daily Show. Sadly, he passed away in November.

Trading Hamster

His human partner, Mark tweeted the sad news two days after Mr. Goxx's last stream. According to Mr. Goxx's owner, the beloved furry showed no signs of serious illness aside from a kidney issue and some mite work. Mr. Goxx suddenly refused to eat and fell a peacefully on one Monday morning. At the time of his death, Mr. Goxx was working on an NFT. His portfolio was up €98.20 which is quite a lot. His sudden death surely startled a lot of his fans, but his memory will continue to live on the blockchain and deep within the crypto community.

 

5. The End of Mt. Gox Case

The nightmare story of the Mt. Gox scandal has been haunting its victim for years. Mt. Gox was initially a Bitcoin exchange based in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. It was launched in July 2010, and from 2013 to 2014, it has over 70% of Bitcoin transactions worldwide. It quickly became one of the largest Bitcoin intermediaries and the world's leading bitcoin exchange. Everything came to a halt in February 2014 when Mt. Gox closed its website and exchange service as well as filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors. The company announced that approximately 850,000 bitcoins belonging to customers and the company were missing and likely stolen.

Fortunately, in 2021 there was good news for all victims involved. About 150,000 BTC was later recovered and a rehabilitation plan has been approved. This means there is a huge chance the victims will reunite with some of their lost funds. Although they will only receive a fraction of what they originally invested, the value of Bitcoin has surged substantially since then. However, some crypto analysts are worried that it might lead to downward pressure on prices should most victims choose to sell.

 

6. PayPal Joined the Trend

One of the world's biggest payments companies, PayPal, has decided to embraced digital assets like never before in 2021. They started their venture by allowing US customers to buy, sell, and hold four cryptocurrencies in 2020. It turned out their plans were met with great success that exceeded expectations. Since then, they began allowing merchants to accept BTC, ETH, BCH, and LTC as payment methods. This step has been followed by other companies as well when Visa snapped up a $150,000 CryptoPunk and began allowing transactions in its payments network to be settled using USD Coin on the Ethereum blockchain.

 

7. Celebrities Entered the Chat

The year 2021 is probably a blockbuster year for crypto, where a lot of celebrities decided to join the trend. The fact that Mila Kunis launched NFT collections to fund an exclusive TV show starring Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is surely an unforgettable crypto hype story.

Mila Kunis blockchain project

She was not the only one. Mariah Carey also endorsed an exchange that year, while Tom Brady gave a whole Bitcoin to a fan. But the most surprising thing is probably the famous American rapper-Snoop Dog who claimed he was Cozomo de Medici, a pseudonymous NFT collector on Twitter.

 

8. The Rise and Fall of Dogecoin

Who would have thought that a dog meme could become a very successful crypto project? Dogecoin is probably one of the most memorable meme coins until today. This digital asset was first created in 2013 to mock Bitcoin, but it suddenly jumped in 2021 thanks to Elon Musk. In the span of five months, DOGE has risen from $0.0047 to $0.73 which is around a 15,431% increase.

It even managed to become one of the world's 10 biggest cryptocurrencies at the time. Unfortunately, DOGE was later crashed since after all, it was created for joke purposes. After that, the market shifted their attention towards self-proclaimed "Dogecoin killer" SHIBA INU. Thus the trend of meme coin began.

The chart below shows the weekly price movement of DOGE to US Dollar in 2021:

Dogecoin

 

9. Tesla and Bitcoin Relationship

The correlation between Bitcoin and Elon Musk is no longer a secret. This is why it's no surprise when Tesla decided to add $1.5 billion in Bitcoin to its balance sheet. Later, the company sold 10% of this stash to prove its liquidity. At one point, Tesla even generated more profits from owning BTC than it did selling cars.

However, Tesla also caused BTC to fall when it announced that it would stop accepting cryptocurrency as a payment method due to concerns over environmental impacts. The company then decided to re-open the door to accepting BTC once miners can prove at least 50% of the energy they use comes from renewable sources.

 

10. El Salvador Bitcoin Policy

One of the most surprising crypto hype stories of 2021 came from El Salvador. The country decided to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender. This means this country has given BTC the same status as the Dollar. They become the first country to purchases 410 bitcoin for $15 million for said purposes.

This is quite a radical experiment, and a lot of parties have been watching very closely how this will turn out. However, with the recent fall of Bitcoin, the International Monetary Fund urged El Salvador to ditch this plan. They believe that the plan entails large risks for financial and market integrity, financial stability, and consumer protection.

Despite what happened to Bitcoin near the end of 2021, it doesn't seem like the popularity of cryptocurrency will end soon. People have just started admiring and exploring NFT as well as Metaverse. In just the first month of 2022, the story of self-made Indonesian millionaire, Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali, has surprised a lot of people. His NFT called "Ghozali every day" managed to bring him a fortune despite being only a collection of his daily selfies. The Ghozali case might be evidence that more crypto hype stories are still waiting to unravel.

 

So many people believe that NFT and Metaverse are the future. There are a lot of companies backing off this technology. So, what is Metaverse and what can you expect from it?