Ajit Tripathi, a partner at ConsenSys, where he handles global financial services development, as well as corporate venturing and strategy. He gave a review of the past year and what the New Year will be like for crypto while contributing an article to CoinDesk.
Bitcoin (BTC) Price Today – BTC / USD
| Name | Price | 24H % |
|---|---|---|
 | $0.00 | -0.15% |
Until June last year, enticing crypto engineers to develop an enterprise product was a challenge. The lure of digital tokens was rampant. However, many people learned the hard way about the crypto boom from 13 months ago. Soon everyone in the digital asset ecosystem will be required to generate fiat profits or revenue in some form.
The Year That Shaped the Regulation of the Asset Class
In 2018, when crypto enthusiasts were not talking about the drowning prices, the focus was on regulation. Christopher Giancarlo, the Chairman of the CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission) in February last year proposed the implementation of a do no harm approach regarding crypto regulation.
Both aspects of the securities debate were awoken by William Hinman the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) director of corporate finance. This occurred after he stated back in June that he has come to understand that “the decentralized structure of the Ethereum (ETH) network and the current offers and sales of the Ether token are not securities transactions.”
As for the policy front aspect, the European Commission initiated a way adopting a systematic approach that involved engaging with the Blockchain community via the European Union and the Blockchain Observatory commission.
The ICO Issue
The news flow last year was dominated traders and bankers who were mooning. Many individuals were shocked when they discovered that ICO was doing badly and because the majority of the ICOs were launched on the Ethereum Blockchain, others believed that ETH must be “ded.” However, this belief was wrong.
All hope isn’t lost in this episode. Any token that has managed to survive a major boom now will be massively adopted over the next two decades as the underlying technology matures and the platforms mentioned here scale. We have not scratched the actual use cases for the technology. And Ethereum (ETH) is now a leading platform because of its ecosystem that grows and accelerates steadily.
The Year of Crypto
Joseph Lubin with DevCon4, and also the co-founder of the Ethereum Blockchain, made his “killer ecosystem” speech for the new year. However, waiting for the advent of a killer application for the technology may be seen as a fool’s errand. The reason is that killer apps won’t be killer apps overnight. The best way is to harness the creative power of enterprises, developers and investors.
To this day, that may be Ethereum’s biggest achievement. In June last year, South Africa’s Central Bank while working on the Project Khokha, discovered that a new payment system for wholesale prices built on the Ethereum Blockchain could process one day’s worth of interbank transactions in only two hours.
Additionally, SGX and the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced in September last year that they have developed DvP delivery versus payment) capabilities to handle the settlement of tokenized digital assets on multiple Blockchain platforms. The public blockchain space began to make enterprise-friendly fiat tokens at pace. And finally, 45 stablecoin projects managed to gather $350 million in funding November last year.
Princess Ogono is a writer, lawyer and fitness enthusiast. She believes cryptocurrencies are the future. When she's not writing, she spends time with her adorable cat, Ginger and works out often.
