Listen to the Article: Crypto Tech Remains Economically "Integral", Despite Turmoil

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Imagine more than $2 trillion evaporated in the crypto market, a largely speculative community, in the sheer period of one year. Therefore, 2022 is indeed a disastrous year for cryptocurrency by any standard. Millions of customers and businesses lost money, and perhaps more importantly for a fledgling sector and technology, trust in the promise of crypto-finance, which was intended to become a remedy to many of the crimes that led to the 2008 financial crisis, is dwindling.

World Economic Forum, however, recently highlighted the widespread applications of cryptography and blockchain technologies, the underpinning of cryptocurrencies, if not all digital assets, continue unabated, will continue to be in integral parts of the modern economic toolkit, despite the great harm these tools may have caused when wielded by the wrong people.

The underlying technology of cryptography and blockchain is applicable to all businesses and coordinating activities, collectively the building blocks of Web3.

Indeed, as a litmus test for the long-term viability of digital assets and blockchains at the heart of financial services (and other sectors of the global economy), we should look to what the big banks and well-established financial services firms do rather than what they say.

JPMorgan, for example, has earned itself a reputation for its friendly stance toward the crypto sector, but the bank is no longer alone in Web3 and crypto adoption. In fact, HSBC ventured into the virtual realm too, by acquiring real estate in the Sandbox in March 2022, soon after JPMorgan opened up a lounge in Decentraland. In 2022, Fazzaco has published articles, too, trying to answer the question such as whether we are early or late in the lifespan of blockchain technology​, and probed the possibilities of how Web 3.0 will look like when combined with finance​.

Human history is littered with examples of apparently benign or neutral technologies being co-opted by bad actors and the ever-present human foibles of avarice, nescience, risks of opportunities, or outright criminality. All of this is magnified and accelerated by technology in new, poorly regulated areas. Indeed, no industry, especially one involving money, is without risk. However, crypto punishes the errant quickly, leaving bad actors with little options for hiding.

The more long-term approach to all breakthrough technologies is to mitigate their negative impacts by putting technologies (like other tools) in the hands of responsible actors and encouraging responsible use. As virtual assets are being further reined in around the world​, only the countries where competition becomes benign will shape the future of crypto.

Let us brush up our memory on the dot-com bubble that shocked the stock market back in the late 1990s, a result of the massive growth in the use and adoption of the internet in a very short period of time.

The bursting of the internet bubble handed over the future of internet to more durable companies, business models and use cases, so we couldn't help but wonder, perhaps 2022 marks a handover of crypto technology and blockchain infrastructure to steadier hands.