QTUM, the native cryptocurrency of the Quantum blockchain network, had a disappointing April as it failed to maintain the momentum of March and slid into its old ways. It ended the month at $5.4 down 42% from its late-March high.
Steep falls punctuate its price line over the last two years with the recoveries rarely matching the heights of their predeccessor.
Today (3 May) at $5.5 it has a market capitalisation of $573m ranking it 105th in the league of cryptos.
What are the prospects of a renewed upside? What is a plausible target price for 2022 and the future beyond?
In this article, we look at the recent developments in the Quantum blockchain and review some up to date QTUM price predictions to help you decide how to proceed.
Quantum offers developer rewards before halving
Founded in 2016, with the cryptocurrency launching in 2017, Quantum is an enterprise-focused blockchain running smart contracts on multiple virtual machines. This hybrid blockchain, which combines features of Bitcoin and Ethereum, operates on a decentralised proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.
Like many newer blockchains, Quantum is focused on developing decentralised finance (DeFI) applications. Its stated aim is to provide an “alternative EVM-compatible platform for developers who want to deploy their dApps without having to suffer from congestion and astronomical gas fees” – issues which have affected the Ethereum blockchain.
QTUM was designed to be deflationary, like bitcoin, meaning supply reduces over time, while demand increases. Higher block rewards were given early on in the blockchain’s development to attract more stakers, but the reward is reduced to prevent the coin from becoming an inflationary asset with growing supply like traditional fiat currencies. Like bitcoin, QTUM is designed to undergo a halving of the block rewards every four years.
“As part of QTUM's coin issuance, stakers are rewarded with a subsidy of newly minted QTUM whenever a block is produced, plus gas and fees for transactions in that block. When QTUM first started, four QTUM per block were given as a reward to stakers. After every 3,942,000 blocks (approximately every four years), the block reward halves and will keep on halving until the block reward per block becomes zero (in the year 2045),” according to the QTUM Halvening website.
On 30 April 2021, the FastLane hard fork, a split in the blockchain, reduced the block time to 32 seconds, from 128 seconds previously, and reduced the block reward to one QTUM. As the blockchain is faster than Bitcoin, the QTUM halving schedule differs from the Bitcoin halvings.
The QTUM blockchain halved for the first time at block 1,427,004 on 1 December, according to the website. Block rewards were reduced from 1.0 QTUM every 32 seconds to 0.5 QTUM. This will change the annual inflation rate for the coin to around 0.5%.
The maximum supply of QTUM is capped at 107.8 million coins, which will be reached in December 2045. There are currently 99 million coins in circulation, of a total 103.9 million in supply, according to CoinMarketCap. This has given QTUM a market capitalisation of $592m at the time of writing on 17 March, ranking it as the 105th largest cryptocurrency.
Quantum co-founder Patrick Dai said in August that QTUM will be undergoing changes in the coming months, as “after five years of Qtum white paper released, we are planning a rebranding for Qtum and rebuilding the tech and global consensus. Qtum has some Unique tech stacks and made some great innovations for [the] Bitcoin ecosystem.
In a November's QTUM news, it rolled out details of the rebranding that month, with plans to expand its marketing in 2022.
Source: QTUM
On 9 November, Dai said that QTUM will support Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade, the first upgrade on the blockchain in four years, which went live in mid-November. Taproot aims to increase the efficiency and privacy of transactions and add the potential for developers to run smart contracts on the blockchain.
On 22 November, Dai wrote on twitter: “Qtum is building a Layer2 network too, by this way, we can scale Qtum TPS higher than Visa, it can go up to 10k TPS through different ZK-Rollups.” QTUM is also moving into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), having run a campaign from 6 October to 2 November to test NFT creation on the platform testnet and identify any bugs.
On 20 December QTUM tweeted that it was implementing a system called Janus "which will allow Qtum to sync easily with Ethereum’s ecosystem and empower developers to create multi-chain applications". It concluded: "The future of the crypto ecosystem lies in establishing proper interoperability".
The emergence of decentralised applications and NFTs has driven interest in QTUM coin news. The price rallied to a three-year high of $35.38 on 7 May, as the cryptocurrency markets rallied. It dropped back to a low of $4.46 on 22 June, trading no higher than $8 until the market bottomed out at $4.84 on 20 July.
QTUM traded up to $17 on 6 September as the markets rallied over the summer, and then dropped back to $8.56 on 29 September during a late-September selloff. With cryptocurrency prices trending higher and the QTUM updates approaching, the coin price rallied to $19.15 on 1 November, its highest level since May. However it has since dropped further and is now (3 May) at $5.5.
So, what does the latest Quantum price prediction analysis indicate about the coin’s future? Is there any potential for the price to move back up to the $100 level over the long term?
QTUM price prediction: can the coin rebound to its record high?
Short-term technical analysis on QTUM from CoinCodex remained bearish, with the coin trading around $5.5 at the time of writing, 3 May. There were 24 oscillator indicators giving bearish indicators and six bullish signals. In its short term QTUM coin price prediction CoinCodex reckoned the price could rise 25% to $6.87 by 8 May.
The QTUM/USD forecast from Wallet Investor was bullish, predicting that the price could rise to $9.4 by this time next year and eventually rise to $24.2 in five years' time.
In its Quantum coin price prediction DigitalCoin suggested the price could average $7.17 in 2022, increase to $10.4 in 2025 and then $17.4 in 2028.
PricePrediction forecast that QTUM could average $8.3 in 2022 but move up to $24.1 in 2025 and rise to $161 by 2030.
When reviewing these quantum crypto price predictions it’s important to keep in mind that cryptocurrency markets remain extremely volatile, making it difficult to accurately predict what a coin’s price will be in a few hours, and even harder to give long-term estimates. As such, analysts and online forecasting sites can get their predictions wrong.
We recommend that you always do your own research, and consider the latest market trends, news, technical and fundamental analysis, and expert opinion before making any investment decisions. And never invest more than you can afford to lose.
