5 Top Crypto Trends For 2023, According To Kraken’s New CEO

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David Ripley says crypto price drops tend to expose those who don’t follow the proper protocol. But once the dust settles, we will start to see new projects emerge, he added. This includes NFT integration beyond art, but into more complex systems.

The last quarter of 2021 saw crypto assets fall from their all-time highs in November. Since then, it seems that a domino effect has affected the whole sector. Crypto hedge funds, lending platforms and exchanges collapsed.

Earlier this year, FTX stepped in to try to rescue struggling companies, posing as the blue-chip of crypto firms. But its recent bankruptcy filings, along with fraud charges against its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, have surprised many investors.

David Ripley, chief operating officer of crypto exchange Kraken and the company’s new CEO, says price drops tend to expose those who don’t follow the proper protocol. While FTX is making headlines now, there have been many more failures, including Voyager, Celsius, and Genesis all of which have fallen.

We have seen this happen in other markets as well, he added. For example, falling house prices led to the exposure and failure of many of the biggest banks in 2008 and 2009, he noted.

Two major lessons should be learned from this fall, he said. The first is that crypto exchanges and firms must demonstrate proof of reserves, which means they must be able to provide transparency and proof that client assets are properly backed. Additionally, security protocols should be prioritized to avoid major hacks.

“We believe the events here actually point to the true value of the crypto at origin, which removes a trusted third party,” Ripley said. “And so the failure of this trusted third party that is FTX, highlights the need and the benefit of cryptocurrency more than anything else. So it’s kind of ironic, I admit.”

Upcoming trends

While progress may not be on everyone’s mind amid the collapse of an entire industry, Ripley says once the dust settles, we’ll start to see new projects surface. The investments that have been poured into the space over the past two years are still funding developers who are innovating and creating new use cases, he said.

In the previous bull run, DeFi and non-fungible tokens were front and center.

But their use cases have only scratched the surface, he said, especially for NFTs that have been used in simplistic ways, such as for artwork. However, it’s really about the underlying technology that can be used in ticketing systems and games, to name a few. We will begin integration into more complex systems, he said.

The way investors should think about this trend is that to the extent that there are NFT-related posts and items moving through blockchains, for example, the Ethereum network, it will have a positive impact by growing this ecosystem. . In turn, this would increase the price of Ether.

The same goes for bitcoin: the more people who start using its network as a form of payment, the more its price will rise, he added.

One area where we are seeing significant adoption is in cross-border payments, particularly through the use of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, which is a Layer 2 payment protocol. This will move crypto from just a payment mechanism world to a fast and inexpensive global payment network. Network capacity reached 5,000 BTC, up from 4,000 BTC in July.

Another major use case that Ripley says will see significant adoption is decentralized storage. It’s like a Dropbox that exists on the blockchain, so it doesn’t require third parties. He cited Filecoin as a prime example. It is an open source public cryptocurrency and digital payment system intended to be used for digital storage and data retrieval.

When it comes to the top vendors in the space, trusted and reliable crypto companies will see their market share grow to meet demand, he said. Additionally, traditional fintech companies like PayPal, Square, and Robinhood are coming into the space. All businesses will eventually add cryptocurrency to their business models, including banks, he said.

“Then I think it will even go beyond that. I think you are already seeing some of the online social media and internet companies supporting cryptocurrencies,” Ripley said. “So, for example, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all supporting the ability to view, validate and verify an NFT.”

Finally, we’re seeing an increase in crypto self-custody, which is fantastic, he noted, because that’s the main benefit and premise of crypto in general, and bitcoin in particular.

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