Crypto crashed so blockchain will not disrupt the world? Wrong!

Many people had "schadenfreude" when they heard that crypto tokens crashed in value and several crypto companies have gone or are about to go under. Unfortunately the price of overpriced crypto tokens coming down is not a proof that blockchain is not going to disrupt the industry you work in.

People who worked for some years in the crypto space have seen other "Crypto Winters" in which the token values crashed and several companies went under. Too many Layer1-2/Web3/Metaverse/GameFi/NFT/... companies have been focusing too much on their token value and not enough on real token utility. These companies will follow the Crypto Winter of 2018, the 2008 financial crisis, the 2000 Dotcom bust, ...

What is different however from 2018 is that newer protocols like Near, Solana, Avalanche, Polygon, Polkadot,... actually work. The transaction costs [a.k.a. gas fees] have come down from many tens of dollars on Ethereum some months ago, to mere cents or less. The number of concurrent transactions that can be processed each second have risen from 8 [Bitcoin] and <20 [Ethereum], to thousands or even close to a hundred thousand transactions per second [e.g. Near and Solana]. Sharding, ZK-Rollups and other exotically named scaling technologies are coming soon, so millions of transactions per second at almost no cost will shortly be possible. Finality of transactions has gone from minutes [which is unusable for customers who are waiting] to close to one second. So the basic infrastructure is working. Also external data feeds [e.g. Chainlink], data reporting [e.g. TheGraph], storage [Arweave & Filecoin], ... are all solved issues.

The next step is to simplify the technology so non-technical users can just use it, without having to download Chrome plug-ins, connect to the right network, bridge tokens,... The Torus Wallet, the Near Wallet,... are all having a lot more Web 2.0 feeling. Even development of solutions is becoming easier. A company I am close to [Zbyte.io], is making amazing progress in no-code blockchain development.

New types of tokens are getting born which solve real life problems. One of the startups I advise [proveanything.com] is working on a digital proof platform which supports soul bound tokens. Ever wanted proof that the Rolex on eBay is real, that you attended an event or a training, that you know a person or own a certain product,..? This is where digital proof comes in, often linked to your person [a.k.a. soul bound token].

Another client is working on finding the best user generated content for some of the biggest brands in the world. NFTs can be used for content license tracking and tokens for payment, enabling content creators to make a lot more money without needing lots of expensive intermediaries and agencies. You can even do a lot more innovative things, which unfortunately I am not allowed to talk about yet.

Financial services has not had a major technology disruption. Decentralised finance is about to go mainstream and do just that. Companies like Pollen.id will soon be able to let anybody create indexes which outperform the market, even during a bear market, and are ultra low cost for investors. Forget losing your money by following a falling S&P 500, paying a high fee to an asset manager or keeping your savings in a bank account at 0% with 10% inflation.

Others I am working with or worked for are using tokens to allow fans to own a part of their favourite football club, to solve climate change by making evidence-based carbon offsetting, use tokens to stimulate people to do good in the world, ...

The dotcom bust destroyed the dreams of many young startups but brought us Amazon, Google, eBay, Cisco, Dell,... Cloud computing combined with mobile apps a decade later brought us Netflix, AirBnB, Uber, ... It is only a matter of time before these small Web3 startups become household names. Smart investors have the opportunity of a lifetime by engaging with Web3 experts who can point them towards startups that are really working on industry changing solutions.