Crypto Projections: my two cents on 2022
Happy to share my entire chat with BeinCrypto. The interview (“Experts Comment: What 2022 Has In Store for Crypto”) has been published here.
From the metaverse to retail and institutional investing to DeFi and NFTs, what should investors be most excited about?
When it comes to financial primitives, I think we have 2 major dynamics investors should care about:
- Post covid financial context. Central banks continue to print money and sovereign states are implementing strong relaunch investment plans (the EU Recovery Fund is €800bn, US is investing trillions). This pushes inflation and private investments: in 2022, with bonds returns near to zero, DeFi returns will remain an El Dorado, together with any STEM-related equity market. Institutional giants will continue to invest mainly indirectly, so more and more blending players (crypto asset funds, derivatives indexed to crypto, custodians) will be born to enable that.
- Usage metrics. The mix of almost no-fees transactions enabled by L2 solutions, together with the launch of dozens of successful B2C projects that were in their building phase during 2019 and 2020, dramatically increased the number of final non-tech savvy users using blockchains (Axie Infinity is just the top of the iceberg) and the developers joining the space. This directly impacts on crypto assets pricing and will accelerate in 2022, also thanks to Eth 2.0.
What do you think were the biggest changes and developments in crypto in 2021?
Of course we should mention NFTs, gaming, L2 and multi chain metaverses, but I’m more interested in something we should discuss more: during 2021 the industry finally surrendered to what I call “trusted DeFi”: semi-trusted or centralized projects or assets… that we trust and upon which we build applications and infrastructures.
USDC is for sure the best example (3bn$ cap at the beginning of the year, now it’s €36bn): a centralized fiat collateralized stablecoin which is now a load-bearing infrastructure of the entire DeFi ecosystem.
Not to mention DeFi projects that stopped pursuing complete decentralization and landed on core-team threshold signatures governance models.
That’s exactly coherent with our non-maximalist Gluing Manifesto!
What are your projections for trends, from a mainstream technology adoption, regulatory or other point-of-view, for 2022?
- Adoption. Major middleware and frontend payment providers (Square, PayPal, Meta with “Novi”) launching their final users stablecoins L2 solutions, dramatically increasing adoption for retail payments and peer2peer payments, especially from mobile/smartphones. The match here is Ethereum vs BSC vs proprietary solutions (what will Square, just renamed to “Block”, choose?)
- Regulation. China, after recent clashes against open solutions (Bitcoin mining regulation war this summer), will finally launch its trusted solutions backed by People’s Bank of China. EU will final take sides in H2–2022
- Education. All this pressure to enter the space (marketers, developers and business profiles mainly) highlights a strong skills mismatch between talent demand and supply. How can we train millions of people in a short time on the basics of crypto space? Many crypto EdTech projects will flourish in 2022 to solve this
