2019 promises to be a great year for cryptocurrency. We have suffered through the bear market of 2018. Finally traders could short cryptocurrency so there were actually those who profited from this cryptowinter unlike the previous cryptocurrency bear markets. Companies with real use cases and value to offer survived 2018. Now it is 2019 and we are still waiting for the 3 “S”s: Stable coins, STOs, and inStitutional money (poetic licence used liberally)! Will this happen this year?
Disclaimer: No products are endorsed by this article and no financial advice is provided. Do your own research.
Rise and Fall of ICOs
The general opinion is that ICOs are dead. However that is not really the case in practice. There are still ICOs that are thriving and ICOs that are bravely navigating the regulations system. ICOs are still valuable and hopefully will be used appropriately and effectively this year.
Stable Coins
At least one of the 3 “S”s have made good on their promises and delivered great products with ground breaking technology, such as Maker and COTI. But why stable coins? What value do they add. While traders and investors gain from market instability and volatility, for mass adoption cryptocurrencies have to be stable. Stability ensures that the promise of Bitcoin being a solution, or at least an alternative, to the current financial crises, will come to fruition. However there are so many issues that Bitcoin still needs to solve in order to make good on its promise that alternatives need to created in order to accomplish what Bitcoin set out to accomplish. That is at least until Bitcoin can figure out how to solve some of its issues. There will probably be multiple solutions and Bitcoin will probably be one of them.
STOs
There are some brave projects out there. Polymath is probably the most well known. Lack of clear regulations is probably the biggest stumbling block to STOs. Will 2019 bring the long awaited regulatory clarity and with it usher in the “age of STOs”? If this does actually happen, hold onto your seats because you will see a similar STO bubble to the ICO bubble of 2017. However with regulation compliance, hopefully most of the scams and other pitfalls of ICOs will be kept to a minimum.
inStitutional Money
The long awaited institutional money is the last of the 3 “S”s. Even though it does not actually start with a “S”, hopefully it will start pouring in this year (LOL). 2019 is speculated to be the year of institutional investments. Again regulations are holding up this influx. In addition, at least some cryptocurrencies need to come up with solutions to their challenges in order for institutional money to be invested. While the blockchain is certainly revolutionary, it still faces major challenges that have still not been solved. These include stability, scalability, and bugs among other issues. Fadelity has bravely announced the intention to launch a trustless, cryptocurrency investment portfolio, perhaps called inFadelity (LOL). However until regulations are in place, institutional money will have to hold back. Maybe decentralised exchanges, such as DX.Exchange, will hold the answer. There are still many challenges for decentralised exchanges, but kinks are being worked through.
Summary
2019 holds lots of promise. However everything is speculative and time will tell. Disclaimer: this article does not offer financial advice nor does it endorse any product or company whether named or implied. Do your own research. Manage your risk. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.
There are 3 things we are expecting to see in 2019 in the cryptospace: stable coins, STOs, and institutional money. At least stable coins are starting to function. For example you can now actually pay merchants with COTI. Are we going to see regulations that are clear enough for STOs and inStitutional money? We are also awaiting decentralised exchanges and solutions for Bitcoin and Ethereum (as well as some other altcoins) in order to move ahead. There will not be 1 solution, rather ideally, cryptocurrency will stand beside fiat currency and STOs beside ICOs, and decentralised exchanges beside decentralised exchanges (LOL). Have a great and successful 2019!
