Author: Davis Canellis, Blockworks; Compilation: Wu Zhu, Golden Finance.
In the mid-16th century, Nostradamus made 942 predictions in eight years.
It is said that he dictated each prophecy to his secretary as a poem. This was because he was under the influence of large doses of nutmeg, causing hallucinations.
This article has five cryptocurrency predictions that might fully materialize by 2025. If they do not happen, they could easily be repeated over hundreds of years, much like Nostradamus's predictions.
1. AI chatbots will gamify flash loan attacks.
We rarely hear about flash loan attacks anymore.
Clearly, after the U.S. Department of Justice arrested Eisenberg last year ('It was just a profitable trading strategy'), they basically stopped them.
Until some wicked marginal lord trains an AI model to look for potential targets in the dirtiest and least liquid corners of DeFi.
After all, who should be blamed: the instant engineer or the law master's degree holder with a crypto wallet?
2. Bitcoin ETF or nation-states will be hacked.
It's okay, most ETFs have abstracted away the actual handling of tokens, distancing themselves from their own responsibilities - possibly replaced by WhatsApp chats represented by Coinbase custodians.
Next year will mark the return of significant cryptocurrency hacking events.
We indeed haven't seen one in a while. Perhaps the Ronin hack was the last real attack that caused damage.
Beware of the missteps of nation-states or ETF issuers that may result from inadvertently falling for North Korean phishing emails to obtain fake chicken coupons.
3. The Federal Trade Commission will sue Meme coins.
You may have heard that the next SEC chair should be more friendly towards cryptocurrencies.
But this is just the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. There are still a dozen U.S. agencies that may take some real boomer actions next year.
The Federal Trade Commission has previously investigated cryptocurrency companies including Celsius and Voyager, and has filed federal lawsuits against fraudsters hawking fake investment schemes.
I will be watching the FTC qualify random Meme coins and start filing lawsuits. The gap left by Gensler can only be filled by another shortsighted regulatory body.
4. 'Crypto lottery' will become a public good.
Cryptocurrency already has its own pseudo-lottery system: Meme coins.
If you really enjoy buying Powerball and Mega Millions, why not randomly buy a Pump.fun memecoin each week and hope to strike it rich one day (as long as you can time it right).
Therefore, it is time for someone - perhaps from the public interest-centered Ethereum space - to write an unstoppable, permissionless crypto lottery that pays out weekly.
5. IRL streamers will adopt prediction markets.
It's so obvious that streamers like Speed and KSI should mint their own Meme coins (or will they become social tokens?).
Say it now: major streaming platforms will figure out how to leverage prediction markets to crowdsource their content.
For example: Speed suggests that he will participate in a sprint event at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, which could be a prediction market. All of his viewers can bet on whether this will be the case or challenge him to do anything else regarding this matter.
