Recommended reads: May 2022
The waves of disruption are fundamentally changing the financial industry. New ways of conducting economic transactions are taking shape – powered by new technologies, applications, and actors. Who better than the thought leaders of these disruptions could contextualize this change and help navigate these evolving opportunities? Each month we compile a selection of articles and contributions in the field of alternative and digital investments.
Today, we share insights and strategic foresights from some of the industry's leading minds on:
- the latest state of crypto policy,
- history of crypto heists
- investment potential of Metaverse.
Crypto Policy
April was the month of crypto regulation and, while there are often still proposals but not yet the laws, many are hailing them as regulatory breakthroughs. At the Bitcoin Miami Conference, Portugal and Honduras unveiled plans to adopt Bitcoin. In the response to the Executive Order of the U.S. Biden Administration on Crypto, the Senate Republicans release a policy paper on crypto currencies in April, called “Crypto Goes Mainstream”. Meanwhile, the EU commission received 10,000 comments on the digital euro bill, which pushed the government to shift its strategic vector. The Observer piece provides a detailed overview of the present state of thinking about crypto laws, as well as the issues that politicians have yet to resolve.History of Crypto Heists
In the last year, there have been eight crypto megaheists, the most recent of which was valued $620 million in Ethereum. The exponential expansion of decentralized ecosystems has resulted in a massive inflow of money, and sometimes inexperienced investors trust a poorly designed platform. The MIT Technology Review examines the history of crypto attacks and explains the root causes. This article relied heavily on the 2022 Crypto Crime Report by Chainalysis, which analyzes thefts in the crypto field and provide a thorough overview of crypto’s security flaws. The overall conclusion is high security accuracy on blockchain can be achieved with a more rigorous approach to platform security.Metaverse & Web 3.0: investment potential
The Metaverse and Web 3.0 are still nascent but intertwined visions that promise nothing less than significant change for the future of business: the merging of the physical and digital worlds and a rebalancing of the digital economy. Recent headlines are replete with references to the Metaverse, it is critical for investors to grasp how to differentiate between hype and reality and develop their own strategies in these emerging spaces. JP Morgan, the first bank to join the metaverse by purchasing a huge plot in Decentraland, has released a thorough Metanomics guide. The paper reviews the evolution of the metaverse, the interlinkages with Web 3.0 and explains how to build a strategy around this dynamic space.
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