Sat 12/31

Good Morning & Happy New year! This is our last newsletter of the year and we wanted to start a tradition called "Prediction Compilations of New Year". Today we will discuss different predictions in the web3 space for 2023!

• Crypto Prediction #1: Binance Coin to Drop to $44, Claims Renowned Crypto Analyst: Crypto experts have pointed out, “It is possible that Binance uses its own coins (Binance USD stablecoin and BNB token), which are in the top 10 capitalizations, for reinvestment. If the assumption is correct, the risk of a cascading liquidation cannot be ruled out, following the example of FTX.” The analyst shared that the BNB chart is forming a double-top, a bearish pattern on a monthly timeframe. The price closed below the neckline at $325.722, retested it, and failed to close above it.

• Crypto Prediction #2: A Lot More Investors Will Adopt Bitcoin: According to The Ascent, Ric Edelman, founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, predicts that more than 500 million people worldwide will own Bitcoin by the end of 2023. CoinTelegraph, BlockFi co-founder Flori Marquez agrees, crediting regulatory clarity and improved understanding of the industry for helping drive greater adoption.

• Crypto Prediction #3: The First Spot Bitcoin ETF Could Get Approved: The Securities and Exchange Commission of USA allowed the launch of ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy ETF last year, but that just tracks Bitcoin futures contracts. However, because the market is now large and mature enough to support it, analysts believe a Bitcoin Spot ETF will be approved.

• Crypto Prediction #4: USD Coin Will Hurdle Tether as Biggest Stablecoin: Tether has held on to its reign as the largest Stablecoin by cryptocurrency valuation. But it could be knocked off its perch once USD Coin decides to join the lending wave.

• NFT Prediction #1: Don’t count out NFTs: “The sustained high-risk appetite in NFT-funding in 2022 is a strong indicator that it will be one of the first sectors to recover next year,” says Burke. “Throughout the past year, we were already beginning to see major NFT investments from major Web2 brands [Starbucks and Disney] and across Web3. This shows no sign of stopping in 2023. Brands will continue to flock to NFTs.”

• NFT Prediction #2: NFTs Will Drive Metaverse Migration for Brands: Corporate growth consulting firm Forrester suggests that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will be a critical touchpoint for brands in the metaverse in 2023. NFTs are unique digital tokens that immutably record the origin and ownership history of a physical or digital asset on a blockchain.

• NFT Prediction #3: Art Will Explode With Unprecedented Autonomy: Venture capitalist and Patreon backer Valentina Zakirova believes that nonfungible token art creators will have unprecedented autonomy in 2023. Accordingly, artists will be able to fully monetize their work without paying an intermediary. Christie’s $5.9 million in tokenized art sales for 2022 was 96% lower than 2021’s $150 million. Despite that, the company Christie’s launched its web3-focused venture capital arm earlier this year. So far, it has invested in Layer Zero, a blockchain interoperability startup.

• Metaverse Will Grow Enormously: Metaverse market has been growing and there’s no limit to it. McKinsey and Company predicted that the metaverse economy stands the potential to aggregate so much that it could generate up to $5 trillion in impact by 2030. One of the biggest impact Metaverse would have is resulting in a vastly improved customer support experience by enabling digital twin support agents to virtually sit alongside the consumer and help them troubleshoot a problem.

• Filecoin future: Filecoin becomes a fully-fledged layer 1 protocol in its own right, paving the way for the world’s largest decentralized data economy. It is now the largest decentralized storage network on Earth. More than 4,000 storage providers contribute ~16 exbibytes (EIB) of storage capacity. Client data stored on the network is up 15 times, year to date. That’s enough to store the entire Internet Archive 275 times over. That said, to be competitive with the centralized cloud, Filecoin will need to grow more than 10 times from here – still a long way to go, but a credible path.

• Adoption Of Defi, Zk Tech, Nfts And More Will Continue To Increase In 2023: Improvements in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector like the protocol Compound’s version (v)3 and the march of the zero-knowledge (ZK) ecosystem continued regardless. Institutional adoption of crypto has also occurred at a rapid pace, with Disney, Starbucks, Adidas, and many other household brands quietly embracing blockchain. Large banks have also shown increasing interest in the sector: Fidelity launched a crypto service for investors, BlackRock partnered with Coinbase to bring its institutional clients crypto access and Goldman Sachs is creating a crypto data service.