Weekly ICP Price Speculation : What Caused the Price Spike?
ICP price has been relatively stable at $25 USD over the holidays. However, that briefly changed on January 4th and 5th, 2022, when ICP at one point spiked to nearly $40 USD. At the time of writing, ICP price has settled once again to about $30 USD. Still, this appears unusual given last week's forecast of stable followed by falling prices during the first quarter of 2022.
What's going on?
ICP Purchases and 8-Year Staking Surges
As Kyle Langham notes, 15 million ICP from Genesis that was previously unclaimed has now been claimed and staked in 8-year neurons. Moreover, there's been a 62 million ICP overall increase in voting power related to staking. Also, in the United States, it appears that some investors sold their ICP assets at the end of the year to claim losses on taxes before buying back into ICP with additional funds.
Therefore, demand briefly intensified, investors showed confidence in the Internet Computer's future, and retail saw an increase in ICP prices and purchases. Now that the buying flurry has calmed down, so has the price of ICP. But that's only part of the story.
Further Mainstreaming of ICP
DFINITY Community subscribers have likely noticed that A LOT is going on with the Internet Computer. Mainstream business publications, including Forbes magazine, are starting to take notice of the ICP ecosystem's astronomical growth. People who thought ICP would flop after its admittedly rocky debut cannot ignore its success in delivering a diverse suite of functional decentralized applications. Developers tend to be rational creatures, so they follow after utility, and then media attention and money comes with them.
It may seem modest at first glance, but the Internet Computer's current roster of 32 full-time developers actually represents 146% annual growth. In comparison, Solana and Ethereum have 228 and 1,296 full-time developers, respectively. The key takeaway here is that the Internet Computer could conceivably overtake its competitors in the near future. It's rapidly gaining traction, and the more that people hear about it and experience it, the faster mainstream adoption will accelerate.
DFINITY Foundation Prioritizes Marketing and Outreach
By hiring talented marketers and community builders like Jesse Friedman, the DFINITY Foundation has signaled it understands even the best product needs persuasive force behind it. Recent articles on Medium show that the Foundation is improving its skill at self-marketing too. These initial efforts to spread the message about the Internet Computer are bearing fruit.
Meanwhile, the continuing success and expansion of the DFINITY Community and its alliance has had a noticeable effect on Internet Computer usage. In particular, our work has helped popularize the booming NFT market.
Next Week's Price Prediction
So what comes next? Despite the spike in demand and price this week, I agree with Kyle Langham's earlier analysis that predicts ICP price will bottom out at an all-time low before June 2022. There is evidence of increasing demand and growing mainstream attention, but it's not enough yet to change my mind.
- High - $35 USD per ICP.
- Typical - $28 USD per ICP.
- Low - $23 USD per ICP.
Last week issue
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