Hello dear friends of LeoFinance. I hope you are all well and having a great start of the week.
I would like to tell you that 2021 has only a few days left, and although it has been a very complex year, 2022 holds the promise of being a better one, having overcome the worst part of the pandemic and with the economy in recovery, we have reasons to be optimistic about the coming year.
However, the events of the last few months in the world of cryptocurrencies have been many and of enormous proportions. The growth of the market with the entry of investors who previously moved with traditional stocks, the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender or at least, regulated by the state in some countries, and of course, the launch of the Metaverse project to mention a few. All this gives us additional reason to feel optimistic about how things will go in 2022.
The Business Insider newspaper https://www.insider.com/ conducted a series of interviews with prominent figures in the cryptocurrency world. And each one gave a prediction about what could happen in the area next year. These I will share with you here. Along with my humble opinion if I think it deserves to be added.
1- Ethereum's price will rise faster even than Bitcoin due to the move to Proof-of-Stake. Says Tom Higgins CEO of asset management for the Gold-I platform.
In this I should recall that Ethereum's board plans to change its block generation system next year, moving from a Proof-of-Work system i.e. Mining, to a Proof-of-Stake system which will reward those who have 'Staking' such a change is planned to implement in 2022 although the exact date is not yet set. And it is motivated among other things, to move to a more environmentally friendly system with lower energy consumption, and increase the speed of the network function.
2- Bitcoin will gain advantage over (traditional) stocks in 2022. From Mike McGlone head of cryptocurrency analysis for Bloomberg.
Not much to comment here really. For some people, bitcoin is already more attractive than traditional stocks.
3- A fortune 500 cryptocurrency company that has been working remotely will move its headquarters to one of the spaces in the Metaverse. Says Brandon Arvanaghi CEO of crypto ventures Meow.
This is in fact already happening, although not with multi-billion dollar companies. I've written a couple of articles about it.
4- The metaverse will become a new interface in which people will interact with the Web and with other people - Justin Banon, Founder of the decentralized network Boson Protocol.
Well this is... obvious... I think, this is the point of the metaverse... I think it will not stay there...
5- Expect a battle between the metaverse launched by cryptocurrency platforms and those created by video game companies and corporations like Meta (formerly called Facebook). This from Brock Pierce, president of the Bitcoin Foundation.
This one is hot gentlemen, for some weeks now I have been commenting on the ominous silence of what we used to call Facebook about the economics of their participation in the metaverse project, there is a possibility that they may decide to ignore the existing cryptocurrencies and create their own, or even ignore the cryptocurrency system altogether. This would undoubtedly generate a battle for who can attract more users to their platform. Moreover, the launching of metaverse projects by other entertainment companies such as Sony also point in that direction, remember that large corporations love monopoly... and cryptocurrencies by their nature would prevent them from totally controlling the market... so yes... this could end up being a full-fledged war.
6- In the next year we will see the first billion dollar hack as DeFi activity continues to increase - Benjamin Whitby supervisor of cros-chain affairs for Credo.
7- The market capitalization for the cryptocurrency economy in general will go from the current $3 trillion to $7.5 TRILLION at some point in 2022. - Rohit Talwar, CEO of Fast Future business research.
It seems far-fetched to me but still possible. In fact, I would like it to be so and I think everyone here would too. Let's remember that for those of us who are already in this world, such an event would help us to exploit the advantage of experience.
8- At least 25 countries will be using a digital currency in their central banks by the end of 2022, either an external, proprietary one, or on loan from another country such as the Chinese digital Yuan. Also from Rohit Talwar.
This makes all the sense in the world and I really hope so. I already wrote an article about El Salvador adopting bitcoin as legal tender.
9- Investors will use Bots to buy NFTs starting the launch process. This could put less sophisticated users at a disadvantage. - Ethan McMahon, economist at data platform Chainalysis.
This one certainly caught me by surprise, but it's totally plausible, I think we all know about trading bots already, and with all that money flowing into NFTs projects for the metaverse, surely there's someone who wants to put all those advances in algorithms, and even AI to generate profits by buying everything worthwhile at a low price on release, and then resell it to generate profits. Although the value of NFTs is governed by numerical rules alone, it includes a lot of subjectivity and appreciation of art for example things that a bot lacks. Which makes this all a complex issue that I think deserves its own separate article.
10- People will exercise part of their daily work in the metaverse. - Shane Molidor of AscendEx.
Well... yes, and if another pandemic occurs, which is not far from the realm of possibility, the metaverse will be the alternative for many business meetings believe me.
11- (Traditional) banks will look to cryptocurrencies for fraud trends. - Chris Stephens Head of security and fraud research and analysis for the Callsing platform.
12- Initiated game offerings (IGOs) will become popular, organizations such as GameStop and Epic can be expected to start making moves at some point in 2022. - Nick Saponaro, Co-Founder and CEO of decentralized payments ecosystem Divi Project.
IGOs or Initial game offerings are projects that offer investors the chance to invest capital into early-stage video game development with the hope of making a large profit when the games are completed and released to the market. Of course with the return of the now metaverse-based MMOs this industry will boom. Although... video game value is very subjective... so investors in this area will have to be very careful....
13- If countries take a hostile position (towards the metaverse or cryptocurrencies) the adoption of these will be slower. - Witek Radomski. From the Enjin platform.
This last one, although it may sound obvious, has many factors that can influence... I think the most important is not what the governments of the countries think about cryptocurrencies or the metaverse, but the amount of control that these governments have over their population and the computer networks in their country. Countries with authoritarian regimes like China can in one day ban the use of X amount of metaverse platforms and thus close a market of more than 1000 million people to them, obviously this is something that can delay any project... but if the US government pronounces against bitcoin, they still can not prevent people from doing business with bitcoins as it would go against the constitution of the country... it would certainly affect bitcoin... but not as much as you would expect in a case like the one I mentioned before.
Recommended Bibliographic Reference
[1] Cryptocurrency predictions 2022 metaverse nft bitcoin ether gaming cbdc hack 2021-12/a>