According to Vitalik Buterin and Brian Armstrong, three important things should be important for cryptocurrencies in the coming year

Brian Armstrong and Vitalik Buterin explain how they see the year 2023: Cryptocurrency adoption will set the tone.

The year 2022 is coming to an end after demonstrating the need for many transformations within the cryptocurrency sector.

Towards a New Kind of Stablecoin

According to Armstrong, stablecoins should be monitored primarily by authorities, since they are issued by centralized companies. Therefore, it would be preferable to regulate them and assign them a series of criteria, to avoid a catastrophe similar to the bankruptcy of FTX.

Armstrong tweeted that “I often get asked: ‘What does regulatory clarity actually look like for crypto?’ So I outlined a realistic blueprint for this that regulates centralized actors while preserving decentralized innovation.”

For Vitalik Buterin, stablecoins are also an important element for the development of cryptocurrencies in 2023. In an interview with Bankless, the Ethereum creator spoke about the need to create tokens that are better equipped against the ups and downs of the economy, stating the following:

“If we can create a stablecoin that can survive anything, including a US dollar hyperinflation, which always happens eventually, then that is a great opportunity because it can become a lifeline for anyone going through this.”

Decentralized Wallets Will Increasingly Become More Important

On the decentralization side, the two leading figures in the industry are unanimous: cryptocurrency holders must own their assets, and innovation must be a priority on this side. Armstrong notes in his blog post the following:

“Self-custody wallets allow customers to store their own cryptocurrency in a way where they don’t have to trust anyone else. Technological improvements such as multiparty computing and social recovery will allow anyone to securely store their own crypto without needing to trust third parties.”

Later, he added that these wallets “should be treated like software companies and should not be regulated like financial services companies, because they never take possession of customer funds.”

Buterin, on the other hand, believes that the structures of cryptocurrency wallets need to be changed to make them easier for everyone to use. They will need to be able to support large numbers of people, provide sufficient security, and replace the traditional financial system. From this perspective, Ethereum is already the subject of experiments initiated by Visa.

More Equitable Regulations

For the Coinbase CEO, the rules must be global and apply to all countries in the world without exception, to prevent companies from fleeing to more tax-friendly, but less regulated territories, as FTX had done.

The biggest difficulty is, according to Vitalik Buterin, setting limits without impeding the development of cryptocurrencies, while remaining attractive to both companies and new users.

By Audy Castaneda

The company argues that it continues to build the “core” of an ambitious metaverse agenda in the future.

Despite the poor economic results of promoting the metaverse, Meta announced that it will allocate 20% of its total investment to the development of Reality Labs. Since the beginning of the year, employees, as well as former employees, reported that metaverses had few active users.

Meta maintains that 2022 will be remembered as the year that allowed “its vision of the future” to reach the hands of developers, and explained that its most ambitious advances began to be seen in his Meta Quest Pro, which blends mixed reality with metaverse, which makes it possible for users to complete their journey to its fullest potential.

Enthusiasm is in the Air

The company’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, stated the following:

“It is a level of investment that we believe makes sense for a company committed to staying at the forefront of one of the most competitive and innovative industries in the world. We continue to direct most of our investments toward our family of applications, as we believe that strength at the core can support an ambitious agenda for the future.”

Meta Remains Optimistic in regard to the Metaverse

Andrew Bosworth elaborated that Figmin XR, an application to create virtual objects and spaces in mixed reality, “is incredible” because it allows users to glimpse the immediate potential of mixed reality to see their physical environment combined with digital objects.

However, in November, Meta announced the layoff of 13% of its staff, 11,000 employees. As recently reported, between the years 2020 and 2021, Meta hired more than 27,000 employees. In this sense, and according to various sources, the company had more than 87,000 workers in September.

Meta defended the investment in its metaverse in the following terms:

“Over time, it’s clear that mixed reality will help virtual reality headsets become increasingly compelling alternatives to laptops and desktops, placing virtual screens and interfaces on your desktop or in your hands. It won’t be long before a VR headset is capable of emulating a powerful home computer setup.”

Despite the fact that 2022 was not the year of the metaverse, specialists have highlighted that this technology could have a boom in 2023. On December 5, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of Telefónica, José María Alonso Cebrián, predicted that the metaverse will take off from 2028 and that from 2022 to that year, its adoption will advance, from concept to development.

“Its progress leads us to infinite computing and infinite connectivity needs. The barrier is not glasses, nor artificial intelligence, it is only the need for computing and connectivity, connection capabilities that we do not have today.”

By Audy Castaneda