By Amy Castor and David Gerard
With all these sunken cryptocurrency buyers, there are plenty of comfortable guts to divulge. So it’s time to channel our inner Maren Altman and tell us what blockchain will be in 2023!
Our predictions for 2022 were right about almost everything – except when we underestimated the power of human stupidity.
* within acceptable error limits
Here’s how we did it for 2022
These were David’s predictions, though he didn’t stick his neck out too much:
- Bitcoin: “Think of the dumbest thing they could do. No, stupider than that.” To show how true this is, we point to all cryptocurrencies since May 2022.
- Actual dollars in the cryptosystem have already started to fall at the end of 2021. In May, the bubble popped and retail sales went home.
- Miners were stuck with bitcoins that could no longer be sold. Our August article covering the collapse of US bitcoin mining continues as we described.
- Cryptocurrency is still made of donkeys to actually use, but that will never change.
- No one has invented a dumber new magic bean than NFTs. Human stupidity, you have defeated us!
These were Amy’s predictions:
- “Bitcoin has yet to experience a spectacular crash, but the conditions are ripe for a crash – weak regulatory oversight and the lack of real dollars in the system.” The great collapse, when it finally came, played out more spectacularly than any of us could have imagined.
- After growing 388% in 2021, stablecoin companies will feel the heat from regulators. TerraUSD imploded in May, and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had to explain to Congress the day after Terra-Luna collapsed — promising more regulation there and then. The Financial Stability Oversight Council’s (FSOC) report in October was uncompromising.
- NFTs were the brightest new cryptocurrency in 2021 – but all cryptocurrencies have a limited lifespan. Crypto bros will have to find a new way to attract dumb money. However, they failed in 2022. Some were attracted by mining, but this was the last of the dumb money.
- Regulators will tighten the noose on the NFT market. In May, the SEC announced it was doubling the size of its Crypto Assets and Cyber Division to focus on NFTs, as well as DeFi, stablecoins and exchanges. [SEC; Bloomberg] In June, the DOJ indicted former OpenSea executive Nate Chastain in the first NFT insider trading case. In October, we learned that the SEC was investigating Yuga Labs to see if the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs themselves, as well as ApeCoin, were unregistered securities offerings.
What’s ahead — our predictions for 2023!
In May 2022, when Terra-Luna explodes, everything is still not over. None of this is over yet, at all. Cryptocurrency companies have no real money and everyone knows it – everyone is already thoroughly screwed. In 2023, we will continue to see them all go belly up one by one. The FTX drop will continue to destroy anyone who still thinks they are decisive.
The cryptocurrency industry is a bunch of drunkards holding onto each other in the hope that a miracle will save them, delaying the total collapse as long as possible. Crypto companies will continue to buy smaller companies to cover the gaps in their accounts – bigger and bigger shells to hide the word pea.
Investigations into FTX and the Celsius Network will continue to reveal the shocking discoveries that have been made since the collapse of QuadrigaCX. Worse than we’ve ever seen.
Either Binance or Tether will go down in 2023. More Binance. (But then, we thought Tether would definitely go down by December 2017.)
The same guys who made FTX nihilo It will try to create another crypto futures exchange out of nowhere to replace FTX. Laundry should be washed. Wintermute was up to the task, but they can be more capricious than the FTX crew.
The price of Bitcoin is falling further. We don’t see any new potential buyers putting actual dollars into the system anytime soon.
Pax Dollar (including Binance USD) and USDC stablecoins – backed by the only actual dollars in the cryptosystem – will likely run out significantly in 2023. This may or may not be done regularly.
US banks that see a huge opportunity in the somewhat non-white money market will be closely scrutinized by regulators and likely placed under extreme restrictions or even closed.
The remaining positive public perception of cryptocurrency has been completely destroyed and will remain so. The “future of finance” will increasingly be associated with scams, scams and amateur fraudsters like Sam Bankman-Fried.
It is the public he got angry and legislators he got angry. Regulators are taking their chances to act whenever possible. The SEC will be more aggressive in its enforcement actions — almost too much each In DeFi, a token is an unregistered coin under US regulations and always has been. The CFTC and Department of Justice have already launched arrests for DeFi market shenanigans, like Avi Eisenberg’s bust right after Christmas. Market manipulation was always illegal – but the laws are finally being enforced.
Crypto has yet to come up with anything dumber than NFTs. But you know they’ll keep trying.
Image: British newspaper astrologer Mystic Meg never happened — as far as we can find — made predictions about something as stupid as cryptocurrency.