- As the crypto market once again struggles to find its feet, Harmony (ONE) has fallen harder than other cryptocurrencies. As of Monday the 11th of April, ONE has dropped 20% over the past week.
- After experiencing a short-lived rally at the start of this year, ONE has unfortunately shaved off most of its gains and has fallen back to 2021 lows.
- Harmony has grown in popularity as a layer 2 platform for building Decentralised Applications (DApps) that offer faster and more efficient alternatives for developers that build on the Ethereum network. Most experts are bullish on Harmony, with some expecting the token to be worth upwards of $1 by 2024.
ONE began last 2020 at $0.004 USD ($0.005 AUD) per token and surged to an all-time high of $0.37 USD ($0.50 AUD) in October 2021, a comfortable 10,000% return for early investors.
At the time of writing (11th of April 2022) ONE was trading at $0.12 USD ($0.16 AUD), down 69.4% from its October peak. Owing to its relatively small market cap of $1.3 billion USD ($1.8 billion AUD), Harmony is one of the more volatile cryptocurrencies available on the market.
Much of its volatility can be directly attributed to the fact that the Harmony blockchain is still in the early stages of adoption and development. It also faces stiff competition from other network-based cryptocurrencies like Solana (SOL) and Cosmos (ATOM).
With all of this in mind, what exactly is Harmony? Can it really compete with large-cap crypto networks like Ethereum and Solana? If so, how high can investors expect the price of ONE to rise?
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What is Harmony?
Founded in 2018 by now CEO Steven Tse, Harmony was designed as a platform that focuses heavily on scalability and interoperability. This means that Harmony’s blockchain can be easily upgraded as adoption grows and allows for developers to transfer their pre-existing applications and digital assets more efficiently than anywhere else.
These factors have made Harmony an extremely attractive prospect for both investors and technical users that were growing weary of the high ‘gas’ fees, slow transaction speeds and now-‘outdated’ (or so they claim) communication models of the Ethereum network.
Now, in order to clear up any confusion about the terminology: Harmony refers to the blockchain that powers decentralized applications, while the ticker: ONE refers to the actual token (cryptocurrency) that makes all this work possible and profitable for investors and developers.
Can Harmony Really Compete with Market Leaders?
Harmony is making massive leaps to increase the adoption and usability of its blockchain among developers and technical users. Last year they announced full Ethereum compatibility, allocated $300 million USD ($421 million AUD) in funding to new developers and successfully integrated new services for DeFi and NFTs. Even with all of these positive developments underway, most analysts are still sceptical as to whether Harmony can ever compete with established market leaders like Ethereum, Solana or Cardano.
Echoing this sentiment, Capital.com analyst Mikhail Karkhalev wrote on the 7th of December 2021: “The competition for dApps platforms is intense: Ethereum, Cardano and Solana, regardless of bandwidth, are the market leaders and it will be a challenge to displace them from their positions.”
“In my opinion, Harmony will be able to find its audience and help a couple of promising projects grow, possibly from the IoT or the financial space. However, the project might remain in the shadow of more popular brands, as it has nothing principally new to offer,” Karkhalev added.
“But, of course, no one is taking away the potential value and future prospects. If they manage to build a competent marketing policy, growth of the project is inevitable,” continues Karkhalev.
Harmony News & Price Prediction 2022
Price action for ONE during the start of this year has tracked the broader slide of the crypto market. Despite seeing a massive surge from $0.21 ($0.29 AUD) on January 1 to $0.37 ($0.52 AUD) on January 15, ONE failed to regain traction. This has largely been due to fact that the Harmony network suffered a major outage on January 15th due to “block propagation issues”, according to a report from Binance. This led to immediate downward price action, with the value of ONE falling over 45% in the following week.
While Harmony’s developers have downplayed the issue and handled it with the utmost transparency, network outages are one of the most major problems a blockchain network can face. If a truly decentralised system can be victim to unforeseen outages that cause days of inactivity and reduced functionality, it can spell disaster for that project.
In the Wild West of crypto markets, the blockchains and tokens that fail to prove they are robust and functional, tend to fail quickly and viciously. If the team at Harmony can’t prove to their community of developers and investors that the Harmony network is still safe and the problems are fixed for good, then the ride ahead for ONE could very bumpy…
With all of this being said, what can we expect the price of Harmony to do this year?
Automated analysis from DigitalCoin predict Harmony to grow sustainably in price moving forward, expecting a gradual increase from its current lows to $0.26 USD ($0.39 AUD) by the end of this year.
Analysis from Wallet Investor is far more bullish, with their algorithm predicting the average price to reach $0.61 ($0.85 AUD) by the end of this year.
Harmony Price Prediction 2023
Despite most analysts and crypto experts maintaining an overall bullish sentiment for the growth-oriented business model of Harmony, they conclude it is unlikely that Harmony will ever grow enough to legitimately challenge the market leaders.
In the crypto market, trying to make accurate long-term predictions can prove very difficult. However, in the spirit of providing general overview, chief analyst from Capital.com, Mikhail Karkhalev gave a slightly bearish prediction of ONE’s long-term utility:
“Harmony is an interesting project, if only because the developers plan to increase transaction processing speed to 1 million transactions per second in the near future, and to 10 million transactions per second in the long term.
“That sounds promising, but as one of the co-founders of Solana said, blockchain bandwidth and scalability are no longer an issue in the crypto market…”
Wallet Investor’s automated forecasting ranks ONE as an “awesome” long-term investment. According to its projections, ONE can reach a maximum price of $0.47 ($0.66 AUD) by late-2023.
TradingBeasts, for their part, forecast ONE’s price to hit $0.23 ($0.32 AUD) by the beginning of 2023. They are doubtful that Harmony has what it takes to massively increase in value long-term and predict a maximum price of approximately $0.38 ($0.53 AUD) by the end of 2023.
Harmony Price Prediction 2025 (and beyond)
Analysts from DigitalCoin reckon Harmony could reach $0.337 USD ($0.473 AUD) in 2022, $0.402 USD ($0.564 AUD) in 2023, $0.586 USD ($0.823 AUD) by 2025 and $0.868 USD ($1.21 AUD) by the end of 2028. According to Wallet Investor’s automated forecasting, Harmoney could attain a price target of $1 USD ($1.40 AUD) per token by March 2025.
How to Buy ONE Token
If you do decide to go ahead purchase ONE token, you can do so on a fairly wide variety of crypto exchanges and platforms. As ONE is still a “medium-market cap” token, it isn’t listed on Coinbase but can be found virtually everywhere else. The best crypto exchanges & platforms for beginners to purchase ONE token on are Coinspot and Crypto.com.
If you’re already purchasing crypto like a pro and you feel comfortable with the more technical exchanges you can also find ONE on Binance & KuCoin.
All legitimate crypto exchanges and platforms will require you to go through some form of verification process that will ask you to provide a phone number, email address or upload ID documentation. Always make sure that the platform you purchase crypto on is secure.
Harmony Price Prediction Conclusion
Ultimately, Harmony’s ONE token seems to have a solid and sustainable growth potential in the broader crypto market. While the token may not ever soar in value from its current price, it looks to have the necessary fundamentals to grow sustainably from here. Always keep in mind that crypto markets are very unpredictable and almost all digital assets are prone to enormous moves in value, both up and down.
RISK STATEMENT: This article is of a general nature only, and is intended for solely informational purposes. This is not financial advice. No one can guarantee the price of any asset will keep going up. Never invest more money than you can afford to lose into any crypto.
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