Cryptocurrencies are here to stay. Crypto 2.0 is on the horizon.
No question, 2022 has been a horrible year for crypto. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, has lost about three-quarters of its value from its 2021 peak, wiping out almost $980 billion (U.S.) worth of crypto.
It’s as if the economy of Saudi Arabia or the Netherlands simply disappeared.
The year has seen several collapses of leading crypto exchanges, with the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto firms in November commanding the most attention.
And there is the underreported story of almost daily ransomware attacks on Canadian businesses and other institutions. After freezing their victims’ computer systems, ransom seekers demand payment in crypto to unlock the computers they have disabled.
But crypto is here to stay.
There are more than 300 million crypto users worldwide, roughly equal to the population of the U.S.
A common prediction for how big the total value of crypto will get is $10 trillion over the next 15 years, That’s almost eight times the peak value of bitcoin alone in November 2021.
In a $100 trillion world economy, that seems a reasonable number.
More than 60 countries including Canada are developing the capability to launch a state-backed cybercurrency, or central bank digital currency (CBDC).
A few countries have introduced CBDCs or are testing them in pilot projects.
Many leading North American banks now process crypto payments. Much earlier they began investing heavily in blockchain, the network of computers and protocols that process crypto transactions.
Even the most implacable critics of crypto (Warren Buffett has call ..
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