It's going to take a long time to get back on track
It’s the end of summer and return to work or school for many people. Crypto has had a boring summer, no matter how you cut it. In terms of prices, we’re pretty much where we were 90 days ago, roughly. (See chart below)
However, beyond that quantitative metric, the industry malaise will continue as long as we have a hostile US regular (the SEC). Sadly, the crypto industry has a lot of headwinds to fight through. Every bit of good news is quickly tempered by regulatory realities.
The non-US market that wants to shrug off the SEC is not so immune to what happens in the US. The US is still that locomotive engine that needs to go full speed to power the rest of the industry. So, we can't just depend on the rest of the world to pave the way on its own.
What could lift things permanently is a lot of things:
1. SEC change of regime and / or change of rhetoric
2. US Congress passing some law(s)
3. Bridges working seamlessly between L2s & from Ethereum to non EVM chains (eventually it should be just “VM”,- the blockchain as one virtual machine)
4. Many more consumer apps with a dead-easy mainstream user experience, leading to millions of committed users that use these apps daily
5. Spot ETF products for Bitcoin & Ethereum (a few of them)
6. Lower gaps between promise and reality for any new / existing blockchain projects (ie lower the hype)
7. No extraordinary bad actors for a full year (ie no significant scams or security exploits)
8. Moving the conversations away from the technical realm that currently dominates (speeds & feeds won’t matter much, but interoperability & user experience will matter). Degrees of decentralization debates are overdone.
9. Players consolidation at the L1 level which is Ground zero (there are far too many competing & non-interoperable L1’s & that works directly against much needed network effects) [related to #3 & #9]
10. Established companies adoption of blockchain / crypto not in an opportunistic way, but more fundamentally
11. Emergence of better / newer / more (human) role models in the crypto space
12. Crypto techies that can better explain the business aspects and applications of what they are building; less tinkering, more useful tech. We also need more no-code tools to put in the hands of non-tech users.
Of course, all these points are being worked on. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that it will take a while to get there as these aren’t going to be realized overnight.
