Following one of the posts at the 1729.com website I'm going to give my thoughts on how the future of cryptocurrencies will go.
First of all, I want to say that I completely agree with the over-all sentiment that this is the year or Defi. It is getting big and it is only going to get bigger. Bitcoin came to teach us that central banks are a scam and Defi is teaching us that regular banks aren't much better. We have learnt already that the services that banks traditionally provide can be done a lot cheaper thanks to Fintech, but with Defi we don't need them whatsoever. We are also seeing the first building blocks of Defi and new ideas are going to start building on top of them creating more and more complex products and services.
One place where I don't seem to agree is with NFTs. Don't get me wrong, I think they are a powerful technology and will be very useful in the future but not in the way we are seeing them used now. I don't see the value of claiming ownership of a jpeg that anyone else can copy. It is the story behind cryptoPunks that make them valuable not the jpeg. Still I see most of the more recent NFTs created are just images an artist creates. I think it will be very powerful in the future for videogames or virtual reality like Decentraland or similar projects. I also think they could be useful as event tickets like for a concert or a game.
I can see smart contract platforms like Ethereum and many others taking the lead in marketcap and if everything goes well they are going to become the core of the crypto world. But as smart contract blockchains grow more complex the risk of a black swan event as in The DAO Ethereum crisis will increase greatly and that could shift trust more towards simpler and more robust blockchains like Bitcoin. Even if the black swan event happens the whole ecosystem will still grow, smart contracts aren't going anywhere.
Another trend that I mostly hope it picks up in the future is privacy. Satoshi's design is great but it's not going to cut it for the future. Government analytics could be very dangerous and the fight for out privacy is an essential one. I see more technologies developing in the future like coinjoins and new ones but, I also predict privacy blockchain to become very important.
The last trend that we are definitely going to see is the crypto nomad. It is already a thing, but with many cryptos going higher in price and new tools for the creation of yield we are going to see people with digital or crypto assets that don't need any institution to cash out the money they need to life. This new kind of people will go to any new city, find their bitcoin/crypto bank to sell crypto for local money easily and all that if people don't accept crypto directly which is a likely outcome too (El Salvador, for example).
In conclusion, the price might go up or down but development is going to keep going and there is going to be many new opportunities for a better world. We are going to see changes everywhere and I am most excited for the revolutions we can't yet see. I'll keep researching and studying this whole universe that is crypto that I love so much.