Author: Davis Canellis, Blockworks; Translated by: Wu Zhu, Jinse Finance.
In the mid-16th century, Nostradamus made 942 predictions in 8 years.
It is said that he dictated each prophecy to his secretary as a poem. This was because he had been taking large doses of nutmeg to hallucinate.
This article has five cryptocurrency predictions that may come to fruition fully by 2025. If not, they can easily be repeated in hundreds of years, much like Nostradamus's prophecies.
1. Artificial intelligence chatbots will gamify flash loan attacks.
We rarely hear about flash loan attacks anymore.
Clearly, after the DOJ arrested Eisenberg last year ('It was just a profitable trading strategy'), they basically put a stop to them.
Until some evil fringe lord trains an AI model to search for potential targets in the dirtiest, least liquid corners of DeFi.
After all, who should be blamed: the instant engineer or the law graduate with a crypto wallet?
2. Bitcoin ETFs or nation-states will be hacked.
It's fine; most ETFs have already abstracted the actual handling of tokens away from their own responsibilities—possibly replaced by WhatsApp chats supported by Coinbase custody representatives.
Next year will mark the return of significant cryptocurrency hacking events.
It has indeed been a while since we last saw one. Perhaps the Ronin hack was the last real damaging hack.
Beware of missteps by nation-states or ETF issuers, potentially due to falling for North Korean phishing emails and obtaining fake Fu Lai Ji 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 SEC. Over a dozen U.S. agencies may still 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 peddling false investment schemes.
I will be watching for the FTC to qualitatively assess random meme coins and begin litigation. The void left by Gensler can only be filled by another short-sighted regulatory body.
4. 'Crypto Lottery' will become a public good.
Cryptocurrencies already have their own pseudo-lottery system: meme coins.
If you really love buying Powerball and Mega Millions, why not randomly buy a Pump.fun memecoin each week and hope to make a fortune one day (as long as you can time it right).
Therefore, it is time for someone—perhaps from the public-interest-focused 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 suggesting streamers like Speed and KSI mint their own meme coins (or will they become social tokens?) is just plain common sense.
Say it now: major streamers will figure out how to leverage prediction markets to crowdsource their content.
For example: Speed suggested he would compete in the sprint at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, which could be a prediction market. All of his viewers could bet on whether this will be the case or push him to take on any other challenges regarding this matter.
