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5 key Reasons Why Crypto Is Not Dead

 

By Nerly Shammah Aug 14, 2023

 

Crypto is not dead, look on-chain for answers, not the media. 

 

 

Still reading? I'm surprised given that I just said not to look to the media, oh well, don't take my word for it, simply look at the figures presented below and test their validity with on-chain and off-chain resources. 

 

But first, what does it mean for something to be dead? For a living thing that would mean for the heart to stop beating, for an electronic device that would mean to stop functioning, so having known that, is crypto dead? 

 

Let's see, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency blockchain and it is still functioning, Ethereum is a cryptocurrency blockchain and it is still functioning, and Hive blockchain is a cryptocurrency blockchain and it is still functioning, so how can crypto be dead when the most renowned blockchain networks are still receiving transactions and adding more blocks to the chain? In essence, functioning? 

 

Popular media spaces have announced the death of crypto globally and some are directing the narratives towards the U.S. specifics, the claims mostly come from the recent lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase headed by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States. 

 

The flaw in these assertions is that neither of these companies is indeed crypto, crypto at the very basic is an encryption technology, leveraging blockchain - a distributed ledger technology - to securely move value from one place to another. 

 

The regulatory entanglements faced by the companies as mentioned above do not validate a crypto demise, these companies are merely exchanges and can be replaced by another, with time. But if that isn't convincing enough and given that I promised some numbers, here are 5 reasons why crypto is not dead:

 

1. The Rise Of Interest In Tokenization

 

Tokenization of everything is upon us, stocks, ETFs, bonds, documents, art, physical properties and many more are slowly making their way into the blockchain ecosystem. 

 

Did you know that there are currently over $348 million worth of tokenized securities on Ethereum?

 

Tokenization, which is simply the process of creating and deploying a digital representation of sensitive data is the next phase of technology x finance evolution, the merging of these two ecosystems has been popularly referred to as "Fintech", well, Fintech is getting an upgrade with tokenization coming into the picture. 

 

Tokenization makes crypto more alive than ever because the process of tokenizing a given asset is literally a process of creating a "crypto asset", this could be as a fungible asset like most cryptocurrencies, or as a Non-fungible asset which is what is more commonly called NFTs and is standardized as ERC-721 on the Ethereum blockchain. 

 

2. Visa deployment of paymasters to facilitate gas fee payments on Ethereum

 

This could be crowned by simply saying the "interest of payment companies" in crypto but what's the fun in that when we could narrow down to specifics like this? 

 

Visa recently released something quite interesting that aims to flexibly onboard new crypto users and enhance the experiences of the current network. 

 

Visa's paymasters contract aims to allow individuals performing a variety of transactions on-chain to cut it on the constant requirement to own a specific network token in order to facilitate transactions on the chain. By leveraging Ethereum's account abstraction technology standardized on-chain as ERC-4337, Visa can bundle up various transactions, reducing costs and enabling users to pay with fiat. 

 

This release has a direct impact on crypto because on-boarding flaws are being tackled and some level of rigidity in the process is being eased, so, in essence, crypto is breathing in more air for life with this development and Visa is simply positioning itself to maximize profit from the revolution. 

 

3. Over $20 billion on average is still being traded daily

 

According to CoinMarketCap, in the last 24hrs, over $22.99 billion was traded across the cryptocurrency markets and the current market capitalization is over $1.17 trillion. 

 

For people of love numbers standing close to the dollar sign, this is a net positive that massive value still runs through this ecosystem, insanely so much that even memecoins like Pepe could experience over $1 billion in traded volume over the period of launch. 

 

This shows the optimism in the ecosystem towards the value of each new tech, project and even old ones as this was largely due to what chain pepe was based on, in this case - the Bitcoin blockchain. 

 

4. Developments of central bank digital currencies(CBDCs)

 

One of the things speculated to be the reason for the development of CBDCs asides from the more obvious being that it aims to replace crypto and bring back control to the government is that CBDCs will effectively boost fractional reserve banking to a global scale, given that "crypto and blockchain technology" is a borderless payment infrastructure.

 

While some countries have developed and deployed various CBDCs on private networks and are consistently deploying features for improved usability, the ultimate station is expected to be on various already functioning blockchains like Ripple, which is famous for being a crypto project with a focus on enhancing global payments infrastructures, so in essence, designed and built to power the developments of payment structures like the central bank digital currencies. 

 

The question now is: how can what is designed to break crypto help it live and not die? 

 

For starters, given the example used above(Ripple), the use of Ripple as a blockchain network for deploying various CBDCs would mean XRP, the native currency of the chain, which is a cryptocurrency would not be dead but increasingly utilized as the network is being leveraged for global transactions. 

 

In addition, CBDCs on crypto blockchain networks are typically "tokens", so in essence, this is the tokenization of national currencies which means that a large amount of value is bound to flow into the cryptocurrency markets, flowing into diverse protocols and enhancing engagement and value distribution. 

 

While CBDCs are centralized copies of decentralized cryptocurrencies a competition to the decentralized finance economies, their developments can prove valuable for the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

 

5. Bitcoin is still adding blocks

 

Is Bitcoin a reason to say crypto isn't dead? Yes, it is. The institutional interest in Bitcoin is growing by the day as we can see with the various Bitcoin ETFs being developed like the Blackrock ETF, which undoubtedly is the most prominent in current times given that the institution in mention is the largest asset manager in the world. 

 

That said, ultimately, the fact that despite all the turbulence within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, miners are still adding blocks to the Bitcoin blockchain via proof of work consensus, currently at block 803,072 with 36,928 left blocks to mine before the next Bitcoin halving and 1,544,500 bitcoins left to mine. 

 

The economics of Bitcoin is rather potentious and quite healthily functioning, numbers don't lie and this all can be seen via great tools like Timeschainstats. 

 

Having said all that, crypto is not dead, crypto is evolving with consistently better developments.