The next 5 steps in the crypto market for 12-48 months
By Marius Morra, CEO and Co-founder of TOKERO Crypto Exchange
At the beginning of 2018, in an already declining crypto market at that time, I wrote this article about how I see the market in the next years.
The time has come to see how many of these predictions have come true:
1. Legalization and market regulation. At this moment the crypto domain is not illegal almost anywhere in the world. Just maybe it is more difficult to use. Instead, it is at the edge of the law precisely because it is a very new technology for which it is difficult to create a legal framework. Crypto is currently legalized in Japan and Estonia. Countries that along with others including Russia and the United Arab Emirates have already expressed interest in creating their own digital currency. Governments, rather than banning crypto, will prefer to legalize and tax it. And with regularization, confidence in this field will also increase, something that will make even the most skeptical to use it.
Update 2023: Very true: the crypto market has started to be heavily regulated, in Europe the framework for MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) was recently adopted, licenses are already being issued in countries such as Estonia, Lithuania, France, etc. In Dubai, too.
2. The big players will also enter the market and automatically this can only lead to growth. Telegram, one of the biggest messaging services has already announced an ICO which looks set to become the biggest ever created. Kodak will soon release one as well. I am also convinced that Facebook, Alibaba, Amazon or Apple will also get involved soon. If you don’t align with the latest technology, you risk becoming obsolete. And these giants didn’t get to where they are now.
Update 2023: Partially true: Telegram had a successful ICO in which it initially raised 850 million dollars, but under the pressure of the US SEC, it returned the investors’ money and Facebook launched the stablecoin project initially called Libra then Diem, invested significant amounts but later gave up project. The conclusion: from this point of view the market is being tested and we will continue to have such actors involved.
3. CoinMarketCap will surpass one trillion dollars for the first time. Perhaps most of the coins now will be lost along the way. But others will come and many of them will be increasingly useful, will be serious and far-reaching projects and will bring added value. Plus value = trust = more users/investors = capitalization increase = coin value increase.
Update 2023: Very true: the market reached $1 trillion in early 2021, later reaching even $3 trillion, and with Bitcoin at $100,000 around the halving in 2024; there are expectations that the market will exceed $5 trillion in capitalization.
4. Over time, in 2-3-4 years, the market will stabilize and no longer return 5-10X per year on investment. It will give maybe 10-20% per month. Compared to the minuscule, almost non-existent interest rates from banks at the moment, correlated with the regularization and automatically greater trust in crypto, it is huge anyway. People will move their savings here, thus creating a “new branch of business” in this area, preserving and capitalizing on the population’s savings.
Update 2023: unfortunately (fortunately actually) here I did not estimate correctly: apart from periods of decline correlated with global macro-economic factors, crypto still offers a lot of surprises with significant returns.
5. Correlated with point 4, the first Crypto Banks will appear hybrid banks that will operate with both FIAT and CRYPTO. There are already projects with potential for this, see Bankera, GLOBAL CRYPTO BANK or Bnk To The Future. And more to come.
Update 2023: Partially true: The mentioned projects have not yet convinced, similar to point 2, new projects with potential are still being tested and emerging, the field remains an emerging one.
The overall conclusion? The crypto market is developing, maturing and many pleasant surprises await us in the future so we invite you to actively participate and inform yourself about the opportunities in crypto!
