The year is 2022 & the month is September, and we’re probably in a recession.

Probably because we’re still hopeful, foreclosures haven’t kicked in, unemployment is still the lowest, and the government hasn’t declared recession. 

On the other hand, Crypto & Stock prices paint a different picture, as there has been carnage across the board. Stocks are down by up to 90% & crypto projects are down by even 99.99% in a few cases.

 While stocks have a clear path to recovery as the revenue grows, what’s the revival case for Crypto?

Crypto came with a few firm promises, which lit up a beacon of hope for folks fed up with the current financial system, such as

#1 – Decentralization

#2 – Self Custody

#3 – Cost

How many make a use case and are adoptable on a wide scale?

When covid appeared, everything tanked, but due to stimulus, we saw unprecedented growth in valuations across every asset class. For the sake of this article, I’ll focus on Crypto. 

Why was Crypto worth 3T, and would we ever go back? 

First, on the valuation, the UK economy is worth less than 3T, and the Market cap of Apple is around 3T while Microsoft is 2T ( at its current stock price)

Crypto, UK, Microsoft & Apple. Who contributed to or changed lives the most and deserves this trophy? 

Now that we’re not closing NFT whitelists in minutes, it’s time to revisit Warren Buffet’s 1992 letter where he mentioned the famous warning.

“It’s only the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” 

Bitcoin was born after the ’08 recession as a hedge against fiat. 

This is bitcoin’s first test if that promise holds.

Past promises of cheaper transfers globally didn’t hold up, so we moved to the storage of value instead, which I buy as we’ve seen currencies being destroyed in many countries & hit hard by inflation.

Most people regard USD or Gold as a refuge, but volatility aside, bitcoin provides a perfect use case for value storage.

While crypto sceptics are thrashing Crypto left and right, where do we stand? 

Have we found the AHA moment, and is it good for anything rather than pure speculation because you can tell fairy tales for a while before the audience realizes it’s just a fairy tale?

So what’s the Crypto use case? 

We went through ICO, Defi, and NFT cycles, but neither of them is yet to make an impact on the masses. 

While building a startup, you’ve to be 10x better ( to have some edge); here we are talking about an entire industry.

Is Crypto making your life better by 10X?

So far, it looks like these are just better casinos with more games to play, the ability to have an alpha & more importantly, 24/7 without any jurisdictional requirement (yeah, I’ve heard of KYC 😉  

So the question of the decade is 

What’s the problem we’re ultimately solving?

And please, it’s not banking the unbanked or expensive wire transfers. 

I’ve generally kept myself away from crypto projects & cycles, but I think we’re onto something now as the pieces seem to be coming together. You don’t have to explain bitcoin to people anymore, and the silk road isn’t the first thing that comes to mind with bitcoin. 

Now that we’ve got passengers on board, can we sail in the right direction?

Web3 concept has been talked about for a few years but started to pick up recently, and as a sceptic, it’s easy to write it off as any other cycle. Because Why?

There are many answers to Why?

  • They want to keep custody of their data
  • They want ownership of the network.

Combine tokenization with a product with PMF, and you can take off. 

Personally, this is an opportunity for us to build the next generation of the internet. Web3 where you’re not the product