Author: Davis Canellis, Blockworks; Compiled by: Wu Zhu, Golden Finance.
In the mid-16th century, Nostradamus made 942 predictions over eight years.
It is said that he dictated each prediction to his secretary as a poem. This is because he had been taking large doses of nutmeg to hallucinate.
This article has five cryptocurrency predictions, and perhaps they will fully materialize by 2025. If they don’t, they can easily be repeated for hundreds of years, just like Nostradamus's predictions.
1. AI chatbots will gamify flash loan attacks.
We haven't heard much about flash loan attacks lately.
Clearly, the U.S. Department of Justice essentially stopped them after arresting Eisenberg last year ('It's just a profitable trading strategy').
Until some evil edge lord trains an AI model to look for potential targets in the dirtiest, least liquid corners of DeFi.
After all, who should be blamed: the instant engineer or the law master's holder of a crypto wallet?
2. Bitcoin ETFs or nation-states will be hacked.
It's okay, 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.
We indeed have not seen much of this for a while. Perhaps the Ronin hack was the last truly damaging hack.
Be wary of nation-states or ETF issuers fumbling, possibly due to falling for North Korean phishing emails and receiving fake coupons for Chicken Bouillon.
3. The FTC will sue memecoins.
You may have heard that the next SEC chair should be more friendly to cryptocurrencies.
But this is just the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. There are still a dozen or so U.S. agencies that may take some real boomer actions next year.
The FTC has previously pursued cryptocurrency companies including Celsius and Voyager, and has filed federal lawsuits against fraudsters peddling false investment schemes.
I will keep an eye on the FTC qualitatively categorizing random memecoins and starting lawsuits. The gap left by Gensler can only be filled by another shortsighted regulatory agency.
4. 'Crypto lottery' will become a public good.
Cryptocurrency already has its own pseudo-lottery system: memecoins.
If you really enjoy buying Powerball and Mega Millions, why not randomly buy a Pump.fun memecoin each week and hope to make a fortune someday (as long as you can time it right).
So now it’s 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 too obvious to suggest that streamers like Speed and KSI mint their own memecoins (or will they become social tokens?).
Say it now: major streamers will figure out how to leverage prediction markets to crowdsource their content.
For example: Speed suggests he will compete in the sprint at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, which could be a prediction market. His entire audience can bet on whether that’s the case or push him to take on any other challenges regarding it.
