After a 2022 in crisis, the crypto industry hopes that 2023 will be the year in which the developments and products that will bring alternatives to blockchain and crypto into everyday life are established.from payment and credit mechanisms to identity validation and digitization of real economy assets, which will serve as a launching pad for the next bullish rally in crypto assets.
“Bear markets”, as periods of sharp fall in asset prices are called, such as the one that occurred last year, work in a cyclical manner to purge the most fragile projects and those that have usability and demand remain. real, not counting the euphoria and speculation behind it.
These last days Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrencies experienced the best week in returns since October 2021; that is, after 13 months of practically uninterrupted decline, which took the crypto market from reaching US$3 trillion in capitalization -the sum of the value of all its assets- to less than US$800 billion (-75% in a year), it is only now beginning to show the first signs of recovery.
In recent days Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrencies experienced the best week in returns since October 2021
“The crypto-assets industry is extremely dynamic and competitive. It is showing great strength despite the blows and adverse shocks it has received, and this is due to the great vocation, conviction and work capacity of its entrepreneurs and developers around the world,” he said. Télam Manuel Calderón, financial manager of Buenbit, an Argentine company that offers crypto services as a means of payment, investment or credit.
The hope of the industry and its users is that, finally, The US$ 15,500 at which BTC was listed after the fall of FTX in November has been the bottom of this fall and that, from now on, a recovery of cryptographic assets begins.
However, the specialists agree, this will only be possible if the use of blockchain and crypto in daily operations begins to become widespread, which encourages the use of this technology in individuals and companies, tempted by the benefits of lower usage costs, greater speed and convenience versus currently available options.
In the Argentina, the demand for crypto assets covers both the risk investing (a bet on the increase in value in the long term) as the seeking to maintain the real value of savings through crypto dollarization with stablecoins or “stable coins”.
“The trend observed among local players is towards offering an ever-wider range of complementary products, such as the possibility of saving in stables and volatile crypto, using prepaid cards that take funds from these savings or giving credits using as collateral savings in crypto,” Calderón said.
Innovation in blockchain infrastructure -the networks in which operations are irrevocably and immediately recorded- is advancing every day, with more efficient processing and lower operating costs, and with improvements in the security and reliability of the Decentralized Finance protocols. (DeFi), which allow you to save and take credit without the intermediation of institutions such as banks.
Innovation in blockchain infrastructure -the networks in which operations are irrevocably and immediately recorded- is advancing every day, with more efficient processing and lower operating costs
“Even with the pronounced drop that prices had from their highs, we continue to see a growing and thriving ecosystem. The key is to understand that the ecosystem continues to grow, that the use cases of blockchain technology continue to expand, and that the initial investment thesis is still valid,” said Francisco Mayora, CFO of Koibanx.
In this sense, he pointed out that the technology of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens in English, which allows a unique digital representation of almost anything) grew especially in the fields of art, gaming and entertainment, but that now it is seeing an adoption of this technology “in productive areas closer to the real economy, applying it, for example, to ticketing and access control”.
“We believe that in the short term the interaction of these use cases with the incipient creation of digital identity 3.0 can generate a whole new category of blockchain applications in people’s daily lives,” Mayora said.
One of the examples of this technology is the Petrotoken, a Koibanx project that will allow “generating a digital financial asset (token) backed by one of the most valuable commodities in the economy (crude oil)”which will represent the economic collection rights of the buried barrels once they are extracted and marketed.
“The industry will have a tool that will make it possible to offer the PetroTokens as collateral to request credits and financing lines on the spot; the possibility of selling the PetroTokens at a discount to obtain liquidity against them; and offer SMEs, corporations and professional investors the possibility of taking a position in the commodity at a specific term and arbitrating with the stock markets,” he explained.
For his part, Ramiro Raposo, country manager of Bitwage, pointed out that the problems shown by centralized exchanges -companies dedicated to facilitating the exchange of cryptocurrencies- such as FTX, which went bankrupt and defrauded nearly a million users for billions of dollars, will make “DeFi continue to strengthen and there will be fewer and fewer intermediaries”, so “this may be a good year for companies that offer non-custodial products and creators of cold wallets”.
“Argentines seek financial independence because it is a country with many obstacles and financial controls. DeFi can bring many solutions to this problem,” he said.
