Huobi Ends CNY Trading for Mainland China Users
The exchange’s final renminbi transaction deadline marked the operational culmination of China’s 2021 campaign against cryptocurrency trading services.
EST. 2026ALWAYS ON
NewsroomMenu
2021.
365 source-dated archive files document the cryptocurrency record for 2021. Each article displays its historical event date and separate actual publication time.
← All archive years2021 ledger
Ledger date1 file
Ledger date1 file
MicroStrategy disclosed a $94.2 million bitcoin purchase funded by share sales
The enterprise-software company added approximately 1,914 BTC and completed a $1 billion equity program, further linking its corporate treasury to bitcoin and public-market financing.
Ledger date1 file
Polygon Disclosed Critical MATIC Bug and Emergency Network Upgrade
The flaw exposed more than 9.27 billion MATIC before a quiet December 5 upgrade, while an attacker extracted 801,601 tokens before the fix took effect.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin fell below $48,000 as a year-end selloff erased its holiday rebound
Bitcoin lost about 6% across documented December 28 measurement windows, while ether and most large-cap cryptoassets retreated with it.
Ledger date1 file
Iran Orders Licensed Crypto Miners Off the Grid During Winter Power Squeeze
The renewed electricity curtailment exposed how licensed proof-of-work mining remained vulnerable to national grid policy and seasonal energy demand.
Ledger date1 file
MATIC Gained 9.1% as Holiday Trading Thinned
Polygon’s token approached $2.88 while Kraken’s total spot volume ran at about 43% of its 30-day average, limiting confident claims about the rally’s cause.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin held near $50,000 as Kraken’s holiday volume sank
Kraken recorded $456.3 million in spot trading on December 25, 2021—approximately 68% below its reported 30-day average—limiting what bitcoin’s muted price move could establish about broader demand.
Ledger date1 file
Binance listed TerraUSD as LUNA briefly crossed $100
The UST trading launch expanded access to Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin while LUNA and the network’s measured DeFi value reached records.
Ledger date1 file
Marathon Maps 23.3 EH/s Expansion With Record Bitmain Order
The listed Bitcoin miner projected a 199,000-machine fleet, although its event-day announcement omitted the order’s price and unit count.
Ledger date1 file
SEC Rejected Valkyrie and Kryptoin Spot-Bitcoin Listing Proposals
The paired orders preserved the divide between futures-based bitcoin funds and products designed to hold bitcoin directly.
Ledger date1 file
Kraken Acquired Staked to Add Non-Custodial Staking Infrastructure
The undisclosed acquisition extended the exchange into infrastructure for proof-of-stake participants that wanted to retain custody of their assets.
Ledger date1 file
Stronghold disclosed deals for 9,080 bitcoin miners
The Nasdaq-listed miner paired approximately 826 PH/s of planned capacity with an equipment-financing agreement for as much as $53.952 million from NYDIG.
Ledger date1 file
Grim Finance Disclosed $30 Million-Plus Vault Exploit
The Fantom yield optimizer paused its vaults after an attacker exploited an unprotected deposit path, exposing a damaging gap in an earlier security audit.
Ledger date1 file
Polkadot’s First Five Parachains Began Producing Blocks
Acala, Moonbeam, Parallel Finance, Astar and Clover joined the Relay Chain after winning slot auctions, activating the architecture at the center of Polkadot’s multichain design.
Ledger date1 file
Adidas Took Originals On-Chain With Its First NFT Drop
The 30,000-token collection minted out within hours, generating calculated gross consideration of 5,924 ETH while exposing access and transaction-fee problems.
Ledger date1 file
Consensys Launched Enterprise Rollups With Mastercard Support
The modular software brought zero-knowledge scaling and transaction privacy to permissioned Ethereum applications, although its performance figures remained vendor-supplied.
Ledger date1 file
Fed doubled its taper pace as bitcoin bounced after the policy decision
The December 15, 2021 decision accelerated the end of Federal Reserve asset purchases, shifted the expected path for interest rates and tested cryptocurrency markets’ sensitivity to monetary policy.
Ledger date1 file
Senate stablecoin hearing exposed a divide over bank-only issuance
Lawmakers agreed that stablecoins needed safeguards but split over whether issuers should be limited to insured banks or allowed several regulatory paths.
Ledger date1 file
Binance Singapore Withdrew Its Crypto Licence Application
The operator of Binance.sg abandoned its Monetary Authority of Singapore application and began winding down the local trading platform, exposing the limits of crypto exchanges’ transitional regulatory status.
Ledger date1 file
AscendEX disclosed multichain hot-wallet breach as losses were estimated at $77.7 million
The exchange suspended fund movements and promised to cover affected customers after unauthorized transfers spanning several blockchain networks.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin difficulty jumped 8.33% as mining recovery approached its May peak
The protocol adjustment at block 713,664 brought mining difficulty within 3.40% of its May 2021 high, marking a substantial recovery from July’s disruption.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin’s $50,000 inflation bounce faded as U.S. CPI reached 6.8%
Bitcoin briefly crossed $50,000 after the November inflation report, but Kraken’s December 10 session record showed the cryptocurrency finishing lower as the broader market weakened.
Ledger date1 file
MicroStrategy disclosed $82.4 million bitcoin purchase funded by share sales
The listed software company added approximately 1,434 BTC while issuing 119,828 shares, further connecting its bitcoin treasury to public capital markets.
Ledger date1 file
Six crypto executives faced Congress over rules for digital assets
The House Financial Services Committee examined exchanges, stablecoins and consumer safeguards as industry leaders pressed for clearer, tailored regulation.
Ledger date1 file
Ubisoft announced Tezos-based NFTs for Ghost Recon Breakpoint
The videogame publisher’s Quartz experiment put transferable blockchain tokens inside a major PC title, although its restricted beta had not opened on December 7, 2021.
Ledger date1 file
CME launched Micro Ether futures with a one-tenth-ether contract
The cash-settled contract reduced the unit size of CME’s existing Ether futures by a factor of 500, widening access to regulated hedging without requiring custody of ether.
Ledger date1 file
BitMart Confirmed $150 Million Hot-Wallet Breach and Froze Withdrawals
The exchange’s initial estimate differed from PeckShield’s roughly $196 million valuation, leaving the scale and cause unresolved as customers waited for access to their assets.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin Plunged Nearly 22% as Leverage Unwound Across Crypto Markets
Bitcoin fell below $42,000 on Bitstamp before recovering above $49,000, exposing the interaction among fragmented liquidity, weekend trading and leveraged derivatives.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin Slid 5.10% to $53,598 in December 3 Selloff
CoinMarketCap’s 24-hour snapshot showed a broad crypto retreat, while a separate Reuters observation placed bitcoin at $53,435.90 at 22:04 GMT.
Ledger date1 file
BadgerDAO Pauses Contracts After Front-End Attack Drains User Funds
A malicious approval campaign targeting BadgerDAO’s web interface led to unauthorized withdrawals valued at roughly $120.3 million in an early security estimate, exposing a critical risk outside DeFi smart contracts.
Ledger date1 file
Square announced Block as its new corporate identity
The payments company separated the Square seller brand from a broader group containing Cash App, TIDAL and two explicitly Bitcoin-oriented initiatives.
Ledger date1 file
Binance Smart Chain activates Bruno hard fork and BNB fee burn
The November 30, 2021 upgrade linked BNB destruction to network activity and changed the software requirements for validators and full-node operators.
Ledger date1 file
MicroStrategy Paired a $414.4 Million Bitcoin Purchase With Share Sales
The listed software company added approximately 7,002 BTC while selling 571,001 shares, further connecting its bitcoin treasury to public equity markets.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin Rebounds Above $57,000 After Omicron Shock Tests Seven-Week Low
Kraken and aggregated market data show bitcoin gaining roughly 4.5% on November 28 after retesting the low-$53,000 range, although venue volume remained below its 30-day average.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin’s Omicron-Shock Rebound Stalled Below $55,000
Bitcoin gained 1.9% on Kraken on November 27, but the modest recovery came as the exchange’s total spot volume dropped almost 64% from the preceding session.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin slid below $54,000 as the Omicron shock hit risk assets
On November 26, 2021, bitcoin and ether fell sharply alongside conventional markets as investors confronted the newly designated Omicron coronavirus variant.
Ledger date1 file
UK Law Commission Found Existing Contract Law Could Support Smart Legal Contracts
The Commission concluded that England and Wales did not need wholesale statutory reform to recognize agreements expressed or performed through code, while identifying unresolved questions involving deeds and cross-border disputes.
Ledger date1 file
India’s crypto-bill listing jolted rupee markets as regulatory uncertainty spread
Bitcoin and USDT traded at steep discounts on Indian venues after a parliamentary agenda described plans to prohibit “private cryptocurrencies” without defining the term or publishing bill text.
Ledger date1 file
U.S. Bank Regulators Set Crypto Road Map as OCC Added Supervisory Gate
The Fed, FDIC and OCC identified six areas for 2022 clarification, while OCC-supervised banks faced advance review for specified custody, stablecoin and distributed-ledger activities.
Ledger date1 file
MoonPay Raised $555 Million at a $3.4 Billion Valuation
The crypto-payments provider’s first institutional financing illustrated the scale of venture demand for infrastructure connecting conventional payment methods with digital assets.
Ledger date1 file
El Salvador outlined a $1 billion Bitcoin bond on Liquid
The proposed 10-year sovereign financing would divide its proceeds between buying bitcoin and building energy and mining infrastructure, extending El Salvador’s experiment from payments into public debt.
Ledger date1 file
El Salvador unveiled Bitcoin City and a $1 billion bond plan
Nayib Bukele proposed a geothermal bitcoin hub and tokenized sovereign financing, but the November 20, 2021 record documented plans rather than an issued bond or completed city.
Ledger date1 file
Electric Coin Company Put Proof of Stake at the Center of Its Zcash Roadmap
ECC’s three-year plan linked a new wallet and interoperability to proof-of-stake development, but it neither changed Zcash consensus nor guaranteed community adoption.
Ledger date1 file
ConstitutionDAO Falls Short After Ether Crowd Raises $46.6 Million
The online collective became the direct underbidder for a rare Constitution printing, demonstrating both the reach and institutional limits of blockchain-based coordination.
Ledger date1 file
Congress mapped crypto’s regulatory gaps in a Joint Economic Committee hearing
Four witnesses presented competing approaches to spot-market oversight, stablecoins, DeFi, taxation and consumer protection without producing a binding policy decision.
Ledger date1 file
Mt. Gox rehabilitation plan became final and binding
The binding plan moved the failed exchange’s long-running insolvency case toward repayment administration, although timing and amounts remained undisclosed.
Ledger date1 file
U.S. Infrastructure Law Enacted Digital-Asset Reporting Rules
The November 15, 2021 law expanded the tax code’s broker language and brought digital assets into information-reporting provisions whose practical reach remained disputed.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin Activates Taproot at Block 709,632
The consensus change introduced Schnorr signatures and new spending rules intended to make complex Bitcoin transactions more private, flexible and efficient.
Ledger date1 file
Modi Chaired India Crypto Policy Meeting as Officials Weighed Regulatory Risks
Government sources described a progressive, forward-looking approach, but the meeting produced no public minutes, binding rule or settled definition of cryptocurrency.
Ledger date1 file
SEC Staff Disapproved VanEck’s Spot Bitcoin Trust, Then the Commission Stayed the Order
The SEC’s trading division found that Cboe BZX had not met the fraud-prevention standard for a bitcoin-holding exchange-traded product, but a same-day Commission review stayed the delegated decision.
Ledger date1 file
Polkadot Opened Its First Parachain Slot Auction
The candle auction began allocating scarce Relay Chain capacity, moving Polkadot closer to supporting independently designed blockchains under shared security.
Ledger date1 file
Bitcoin touched $69,000 after inflation hit a 31-year high
Coinbase’s BTC-USD market reached $69,000 after the U.S. CPI release, while ETH-USD touched $4,867.81. Both finished the UTC session below their opens, limiting claims that inflation produced a durable breakout.
Ledger date1 file
Coinbase’s trading volume fell 29% as the crypto boom cooled in the third quarter
The public exchange’s November 9, 2021 results exposed the volatility beneath cryptocurrency’s expanding institutional footprint.
Ledger date1 file
Ethereum Name Service launched its token and DAO governance
The naming protocol opened claims for more than 137,000 eligible accounts, coupling its token distribution to constitutional voting and delegated governance.
Ledger date1 file
Solana’s record rally secured fourth place in the crypto market
SOL reached a new intraday high as Solana’s estimated market value overtook Tether and Cardano, underscoring investor demand for alternative smart-contract platforms.
Ledger date1 file
House passage put sweeping crypto reporting provisions on Biden’s desk
By November 6, H.R. 3684 had cleared Congress with a broad digital-asset broker definition and new tax-reporting provisions intact.
Ledger date1 file
House clears infrastructure bill with disputed crypto reporting rules
The 228–206 vote advanced a broad digital-asset broker definition while leaving Treasury and the IRS to determine how the reporting regime would work.
Ledger date1 file
Polkadot enabled parachain registration and crowdloans after governance vote
Referendum 42 enacted runtime version 9122, opening the network’s launch machinery one week before its first parachain auction.
Ledger date1 file
Commonwealth Bank unveiled Australia’s first bank-app crypto pilot
Australia’s largest lender said a forthcoming CommBank app feature would let selected customers buy, sell and hold as many as ten crypto assets through infrastructure supplied by Gemini and Chainalysis.
Ledger date1 file
CME planned smaller Ether futures as the cryptocurrency approached a record
The proposed 0.10-ether contract would give market participants a more granular, cash-settled instrument for managing exposure.