A (Satirical) 2023 Outlook for Crypto
Note: This article is intended entirely as a satirical lampoon. The opinions presented do not represent the true views of 0xFishylosopher or of Web3.com Ventures, and should not be taken seriously as informational or financial advice.
Welcome to the new year. We’ve arrived in the season for the setting of unrealistic flags, the making of bound-to-be-broken promises, and experts pulling numbers out of thin air. And this year, there’s more bears out in crypto than in the Alaska wilderness. Given all the FUD surrounding the industry, it would do no harm to add to that — after all, crypto is obviously already a failure, no? So let’s armchair philosophize about a future we have absolutely no idea about.
2022 will be forever remembered as the year that crypto exploded into the mainstream — as in, the blew-up-in-your-face type. And what a beautiful, year-long fireworks display that was! From the bright bursts of Terra in the Spring, to the thunderous shattering of Celsius in the Summer, to the vibrant colors of FTX in the Fall, every season had its own spectacle, a melodramatic polyphony of hubris and greed.
And behind these fireworks, the stars of the industry twinkled out behind the smoke one by one — wunderkind billionaires in South Korea, the US, and the Bahamas all hearing their Chainlinks go “clinck”. Who would have thought, that the poor meth-addicted Effective Altruist would see all his hopes evaporate like his clients’ life savings! Those cops! Those media! They didn’t even spare his sex tape with his sister-company-CEO! Oedipus would surely welcome his fallen crypto brethren.
So much for crypto. So much for a revolutionary reimagination of the Internet into a decentralized and democratized “Network State.” As it turns out, the world of crypto is just like the world of traditional finance, complete with the willingness of its institutional actors to scam and steal ordinary users’ retirement plans. All that’s missing is a government bailout. 2022 certainly should have calmed all Wall Street’s fears that crypto was a radically different and morally upstanding enterprise.
But onwards to 2023. X-To-Earn and all the shiny DeFi models that seemed to totally make sense a year ago have all but collapsed. Absolutely predictable, right? Nowadays, “it’s the tech that matters,” as everyone says. Buidl buidl buidl instead of scaml scaml scaml. So what tech do we see out there? “Zero Knowledge Proofs!” says the intrepid Bay Area angel investor. Yes, the Optimism on this one is big. Coincidentally, it perfectly describes how much said angel investor likely knows about zk-SNARKs and KZGs.
zk-SNARKs are like snake-oil: put them on any sore and it will heal immediately. Ethereum too slow? Use a SNARK. Don’t want your address leaked? Use a SNARK. Want to prove you have money? Use a SNARK. So it is unsurprising that these SNARK-oil-salesmen are popping up everywhere to prop up their valuations, whether they understand the math behind it or not. But then again, we shouldn’t be surprised. Remember just a few years ago, when anything with the word “blockchain” would see a 10x increase in interest and funding? Even ice-tea companies became “blockchain adopters.” As it turns out, markets love a one-word technological panacea.
Markets also react to fireworks too. And as we mentioned, 2022 has been full of them. And with the question of “who dis” and “why you got my money” comes the boom of decentralized ID. Time for some SNARK-oil again! Decentralized ID is the next big thing, we are told. It’s the solution to all our problems with online identity, security and privacy. But do we really need yet another digital identity solution? Or is it just another shiny new object to cling onto?
Decentralized ID is being presented as a panacea for all our online identity woes, with companies like uPort and Civic leading the charge. But the truth is, we have been here before. Remember when Facebook Connect was going to solve all our login problems? How did that work out? And let’s not forget the countless other digital identity solutions that have come and gone over the years.
And then there are NFTs. Oh boy, where do we even start with these? Million-dollar apes? Shitbeasts? Moonbirds? Talk about art. Abstract art is about the ideas held in the mind of the artist, not about the contents in the mind of the viewers (or lack thereof). Such social value for NFTs. I certainly can’t wait to use a Shitbeast as a driver’s license and a Moonbird as a credit card.
But come to the end, we just don’t know. The crypto and blockchain industry is still in its infancy and we are still trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. But one thing is for sure, the hype and excitement around these new technologies will continue to drive the market, whether they live up to their potential or not. So, let’s all sit back, enjoy the show and watch as the crypto world explodes into the mainstream once again.
Oh, and please don’t blame me for “my opinions”. You can blame ChatGPT instead.
🐦 @0xfishylosopher
📅 11 January 2023
P.S. See if you can spot the two paragraphs that ChatGPT wrote in the essay
