Filecoin price prediction: What is FIL and how high can it go?
Filecoin is a decentralised storage platform token. So what’s next for the coin in 2022?
Contents
- From the Filecoin whitepaper
- What is Filecoin?
- Filecoin price analysis
- Filecoin price prediction: 2022 and beyond
- Filecoin vs Bitcoin
- FAQs
The value of the Filecoin cryptocurrency (FIL) rose by more than 250% between March and early May 2021, as the coin rode the crest of the crypto wave. Since then, investor uncertainty regarding the speculative asset has plagued the coin, despite some promising new developments for the protocol. So, is FIL coin a good investment – and can we make a Filecoin price prediction?
Filecoin broke records during its initial coin offering (ICO) launch in 2017, raising more than $52m at the presale stage from big names like Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital, and a further $205m in the ICO. With the successful launch of its long-awaited testnet and mainnet products, the coin is still attracting interest across the globe.
In this article, we look at whether Filecoin’s value will go up and canvass some experts’ opinions as to whether it is a worthwhile investment.
From the Filecoin whitepaper
The whitepaper states: “Filecoin is a decentralised storage network that turns cloud storage into an algorithmic market. The market runs on a blockchain with a native protocol token (also called Filecoin), which miners earn by providing storage to clients. Conversely, clients spend Filecoin hiring miners to store or distribute data.”
The document goes on to say: “Filecoin is a protocol token whose blockchain runs on a novel proof, called Proof-of-Spacetime, where blocks are created by miners that are storing data. Filecoin protocol provides a data storage and retrieval service via a network of independent storage providers that does not rely on a single coordinator, where: One – clients pay to store and retrieve data; two – storage miners earn tokens by offering storage; and three – retrieval miners earn tokens by serving data.”
What is Filecoin?
Filecoin is an ambitious project that aims to reduce the dependency of cloud storage on centralised systems. It is a storage pool that permits anyone to rent out their hard drive storage space. Filecoin also allows anyone globally to buy the storage they need from the network.
The project began in 2014 as an incentive layer for the InterPlanetary File System, a peer-to-peer storage network. Filecoin is an open protocol and aims to store data in a decentralised way.
The Filecoin ecosystem, along with the blockchain, uses a native governance token – known as Filecoin (FIL) – to pay for services on the platform.
Unlike cloud-storage companies such as Cloudflare or Amazon Web Services, where centralised companies hold the power over stored data and act as a gatekeeper, Filecoin uses its decentralised nature to give power back to users, as well as making data easy to retrieve and difficult to censor.
FIL/USD price history
| Date | Close | Change | Change(%) | Open | High | Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 25, 2023 | 5.4124 | 0.0275 | 0.51% | 5.3849 | 5.4522 | 5.3620 |
| Mar 24, 2023 | 5.3829 | -0.3628 | -6.31% | 5.7457 | 5.8737 | 5.2785 |
| Mar 23, 2023 | 5.7448 | 0.2630 | 4.80% | 5.4818 | 5.7915 | 5.4431 |
| Mar 22, 2023 | 5.4809 | -0.2702 | -4.70% | 5.7511 | 5.7965 | 5.1631 |
| Mar 21, 2023 | 5.7492 | 0.2004 | 3.61% | 5.5488 | 5.9092 | 5.4604 |
| Mar 20, 2023 | 5.5498 | -0.5518 | -9.04% | 6.1016 | 6.2648 | 5.4865 |
| Mar 19, 2023 | 6.0978 | 0.3943 | 6.91% | 5.7035 | 6.3292 | 5.6798 |
| Mar 18, 2023 | 5.7025 | -0.4981 | -8.03% | 6.2006 | 6.3603 | 5.6530 |
| Mar 17, 2023 | 6.2026 | 0.5734 | 10.19% | 5.6292 | 6.2915 | 5.5314 |
| Mar 16, 2023 | 5.6311 | 0.1920 | 3.53% | 5.4391 | 5.7572 | 5.3476 |
| Mar 15, 2023 | 5.4362 | -1.1230 | -17.12% | 6.5592 | 6.8386 | 5.1762 |
| Mar 14, 2023 | 6.5631 | 0.3604 | 5.81% | 6.2027 | 7.3697 | 5.9691 |
| Mar 13, 2023 | 6.1988 | 0.6257 | 11.23% | 5.5731 | 6.4016 | 5.5091 |
| Mar 12, 2023 | 5.5740 | 0.7441 | 15.41% | 4.8299 | 5.6236 | 4.7071 |
| Mar 11, 2023 | 4.8309 | -0.3198 | -6.21% | 5.1507 | 5.3358 | 4.5312 |
| Mar 10, 2023 | 5.1517 | -0.1868 | -3.50% | 5.3385 | 5.3539 | 4.9451 |
| Mar 9, 2023 | 5.3375 | -0.2612 | -4.67% | 5.5987 | 5.9995 | 5.1204 |
| Mar 8, 2023 | 5.5998 | -0.1903 | -3.29% | 5.7901 | 5.9098 | 5.4206 |
| Mar 7, 2023 | 5.7843 | -0.1214 | -2.06% | 5.9057 | 6.0004 | 5.5853 |
| Mar 6, 2023 | 5.9049 | -0.0335 | -0.56% | 5.9384 | 6.0480 | 5.8151 |
Filecoin price analysis
The price of FIL started surging in April 2020 after the announcement of its listing on the Gemini exchange, with high trading volumes. In April 2019, FIL was trading at an average price of $4.50 and broke barriers in the last days of 2020 to trade above $20.
In March 2021, Xinyuan Technology, a computer hardware giant based in Shenzhen, signed a deal to invest in Filecoin miners, drawing more attention to the cryptocurrency. Reporters were quoted as saying the Chinese tech firm had invested CNY580m ($89m), in Filecoin.
Within days of the announcement, the Filecoin price rose more than 250%, trading above $200, and crypto experts said that was just the beginning for the decentralised token.
However, since then the crypto market has been volatile. A flash crash on 7 September 2021 saw the FIL price fall by 30%, from $118.70 to $78.18. On 24 September, China declared all cryptocurrency transactions illegal, prompting another FIL slump, from $72.63 to $51.81.
However, on 16 December 2021, New York City’s Open Data office announced that it was working with Protocol Labs to put city information on the Filecoin network. This five-year plan will allow NYC to test decentralised storage technology, which could improve government operations – boding well for the coin’s longer-term future.
It has been a difficult period for crypto across the board since December 2021, and Filecoin was no exception. Despite Filecoin’s adoption by numerous big data firms, including German digital asset company LUXXFOLIO, by 31 January 2022 the coin was trading at lows of $19.07.
In February 2022, the team at digital asset firm BlockFi added six new crypto assets for their non-US clients via BlockFi International, including Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche, Cosmos and Filecoin. More developments were to come, as R&D lab Protocol Labs launched the $38m Filecoin NNI Renewable Energy Fund towards the end of February.
The token closed the month of May at $21.67. However, Filecoin has yet to recover from the long-running bear market. On 18 June, the token was trading at lows of $4.82. The token closed on 30 June at $5.39.
One of the more substantial rallies this year came towards the end of July after it emerged Holon Global Investments had launched three new crypto funds with one focused on FIL:
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On 31 July, FIL saw a price uptick of over 37% to trade at highs of $10.62.
The Filecoin ecosystem is committed to its goal of becoming carbon-neutral, and posted the following on Twitter:
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As of 11 August and at the time of writing, FIL was trading at $8.74. Filecoin had a market cap of more than $2bn and a circulating supply of a little more than 2.58 million tokens.
Filecoin price prediction: 2022 and beyond
DigitalCoinPrice’s Filecoin price prediction estimates its value will be $13.03 in September of this year, and $12.30 in December. Its long-term Filecoin price prediction suggests the coin could be worth as much as $12.57 by August 2023, and $15.41 by August 2024. The site’s Filecoin price prediction for 2025 forecasts a yearly average of $17.69, and as much as $40.22 in 2030.
Out of a panel of 26 indicators published by DigitalCoinPrice, eight suggest selling (longer-term SMAs and EMAs) 11 suggest holding and seven suggest buying.
TradingBeasts makes a Filecoin price prediction for 2022 that stands at $8.85 by the end of September, but $8.51 in December.
WalletInvestor forecasts that the Filecoin price in a year’s time will be less than $1.96, and does not expect the token to recover, suggesting it is a “bad long-term (one-year) investment”.
Cryptopolitan is more optimistic, stating: “The Filecoin price prediction for 2030 is $188.18. Filecoin, through its foundation, sponsors the storage of critical public data. These include Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, OpenAq, gnomAD and Project Gutenberg. These files will ensure Filecoin remains helpful in the future. The coin’s price will range from $220.19 to $181.58.”
Filecoin vs Bitcoin
The cloud computing market is already large, and is still growing at a fast pace. However, the market is dominated by a few major players, such as Amazon and Microsoft. These are all part of the centralised network.
With advancing technology, the cloud storage market will expand hugely in the future, which is likely to boost Filecoin. In contrast, Bitcoin is only a digital currency that you can buy, sell or exchange. Its value is tied to trading.
FAQs
How high will Filecoin go?
According to crypto forecasters and the token’s technical analysis, Filecoin’s value is capable of surging in the future. But when it comes to making a FIL coin prediction, it is important to remember that crypto markets are highly volatile, making it difficult for analysts to accurately forecast what a coin’s price will be in the future.
Always be sure to do your own research and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
How to mine FIL coin
Instead of contributing computational power, FIL miners contribute storage capacity that can then be used in deals with clients who are searching for ways to store data.
There are two types of mining in the Filecoin network: storage and retrieval. In storage mining, users earn FIL by storing data for clients and computing cryptographic proofs to validate the integrity of data over time, making sure the data has not been manipulated by the miner.
The chances of reaping the block reward and transaction fees are proportional to the amount of storage and uptime the miner contributes to the Filecoin network.
In retrieval mining, users earn FIL by winning bids and mining fees for a particular file, which are determined solely by the market value of the file’s size.
How to buy Filecoin
If you want to buy FIL, you can do so at a range of exchanges.
Just remember to do your research first, and never invest more money than you can afford to lose.
How to invest in Filecoin
Investing in this cryptocurrency is quite simple, and there are many online and offline wallets that you can use to store your Filecoins.
Before investing in any asset, always do your own research or contact your financial adviser before arriving at a decision. Remember that your decision should be based on your attitude to risk, your expertise in this market, the spread of your portfolio and how comfortable you feel about losing money.
Never invest more money than you can afford to lose, and bear in mind that past performance is no guarantee of future returns.
