HodlX Guest PostSubmit Your Post
In the span of a few short months, the crypto space has witnessed the collapse of its most prized stablecoin protocol, the insolvency of multiple billion-dollar centralized finance (CeFi) platforms, the liquidation of its most revered private capital fund and following in suit, the departure of its dearest thought leaders.
Deep in the red and approaching max pain, many crypto investors are finally arriving at a critical juncture of self-inquiry What am I even investing in?
Straightening such a question mark composes and defines the trying journey through a bear market, where depleted traders reevaluate their investment theses before determining whether to hang up their boots for good or gather capital to face the market anew.
For the traders that summon the strength to face the market once more, only genuine utility will be enough to weather their skepticism and restore enthusiasm let alone participation and capital.
As such, it is here in the suffocating bear market of 2022 where cryptos leading privacy protocols are poised to make their mark. With surveillance technologies and authoritarian initiatives on the rise, privacy is the truest and most tried form of utility the market has on tap no speculation required.
The crypto bear market of 2022
As in past cycles, notorious critics have leveraged this years abrupt market downturn to throw fire at many of cryptocurrencys suspect sectors most notably, CeFi. But for perhaps the first time, in 2022s bear market no critic has yet been bold enough to dispel cryptocurrency as a whole. From influencers to institutions, to the traditional finance (TradFi) mainstream, a consensus has been established the asset class is here to stay.
Traversing volatile market cycles
Bullish and bearish periods play complementary roles in the development of nascent technology.
Bull markets provide a surge of capital and human resources that attract new talent and spur further innovation but in a haphazard and frenzied fashion. Amid the winners, many unprepared, unprofessional and unstable projects receive funding and launch aggressive marketing campaigns.
During the bear market, capital and resources are drained and bull market beneficiaries battle to remain afloat. The bear market is a time of refinery and clarity. With speculation waning to a standstill, all attention turns to what platforms and protocols actually provide for their users. Investors query, Which platforms and technical solutions acquire and retain users when there is no promise of profit?
Such is the bear markets purest ultimatum. It is the foremost test of use case potential. To that end, the bear market cultivates a truly level playing field for projects new and old and replaces the noise and frenzy of the bull market with a true meritocracy for users and capital for adoption.
Beating the bear market inertia
In much the same way that profit margins serve businesses, tokenomic models act as the lifeline, keeping cryptocurrency protocols afloat during periods of macroeconomic distress.
With sentiment nearing historic lows, many tokenomic models have been exposed as speculative at best and dysfunctional at worst. As trust continues to decline across the crypto landscape, investors and users will withhold funds and demand a higher standard of professionalism from projects.
Whether ostensibly or in honesty, the champions of the 2020-21 bull market built ecosystems on the premise of profits decentralized finance DeFi and CeFi platforms offered staking yields, stablecoin protocols promised seigniorage and scalability solutions tantalized investors with good old-fashioned appreciation.
In 2022, retail has had enough. To pull cryptocurrency from the depths of bear market despair, projects must submit innovative value propositions absent from the usual profit ploys.
That is, they must demonstrate empirical utility and none answers the call like privacy.
Timely and imperative the undeniable utility of on-chain privacy
Kicking off with the Patriot Act, the twenty-first century has proven itself to be the era of mass surveillance. Now, its third decade is quickly becoming the era of draconian financial restrictions.
With many countries across the world nearing hyperinflation most recently Turkey banks and financial institutions are beginning to impose the usual measures restrictions on withdrawals and capital flight. And for the first time, they have the technologies and tools in place to enforce them.
As per the words of globally-renowned privacy advocate Edward Snowden in a recent interview,
We are increasingly scrutinized, tracked, quantified and measured. We are nudged, we are manipulated We have inverted the traditional model of how we protect society from power.
Setting the stage for the next wave
In recent years, citizens seeking to protect their wealth have successfully flocked to decentralized systemsmost notably to Bitcoin and Ethereum. But with a slew of rising blockchain data analytics companies scoring massive valuations and high-profile clients, individuals are more exposed and more at risk than ever before.
On-chain surveillance is now a well-defined science and accessible service, and on-chain privacy is fast transitioning from preferred to imperative among investors.
As bearish sentiment weighs heavier and the crypto market begins to form a bottom, conditions will materialize for new catalysts to emerge and carry crypto to new heights. In this prerogative, a pair of privacy protocols are best positioned to take the reins.
As in any free market, users will ultimately pick privacys finest to lead the next crypto market charge.
Alex Shipp, chief strategy officer at Offshift, is a strategist, writer and thought leader in the digital asset space with a background in traditional finance, economics and the emerging fields of decentralized finance, tokenomics, blockchain and digital assets. At Offshift, Alex contributes to platform tokenomics, produces content and conducts business development on behalf of the project.
Follow Us on Twitter Facebook Telegram
Featured Image: Shutterstock/Quardia/Alexander_Evgenyevich
- NSA surveillance exposed by Snowden ruled unlawful - BBC - May 25th, 2024
- Can Edward Snowden Become the Next CEO of Twitter? Elon Musk is Ready to Give Up - Analytics Insight - May 15th, 2024
- Edward Snowden Weighs In On Boeing Whistleblower's Death With Cryptic Message: 'If I Die, It Wasn't Suicide' - TradingView - March 21st, 2024
- Edward Snowden Calls Bitcoin 'Most Significant Monetary Advance Since the Creation of Coinage' Featured Bitcoin ... - Bitcoin.com News - February 25th, 2024
- Edward Snowden: Bitcoin 'Most Significant Monetary Advance Since the Creation of Coinage' - Decrypt - February 25th, 2024
- Edward Snowden's Ominous Warning to the World - Newsweek - January 15th, 2024
- Edward Snowden Says Institutions 'Burning The Public's Faith' At Time When AI Can Replace Them: 'A Revolu - Benzinga - January 15th, 2024
- Edward Snowden: Bitcoin Safeguard for Pensions and Retirement - CoinGape - January 15th, 2024
- Edward Snowden and Jack Dorsey Are Both Asking the Same Question: What Happened in 1971? - Foundation for Economic Education - December 11th, 2023
- Edward Snowden - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - October 27th, 2023
- Edward Snowden On The NSA, His Book 'Permanent Record' And Life In ... - April 17th, 2023
- 209-359-17.. located in Merced.. Find Info before it disappears... - April 17th, 2023
- Edward Snowden gets Russian passport after swearing oath of allegiance ... - April 8th, 2023
- Edward Snowden - Education, Movie & Documentary - Biography - March 5th, 2023
- Before sending a voice message, ask if you could say it in writing: How to stop the avalanche of WhatsApp audios - EL PAS USA - February 25th, 2023
- Entertainment News Roundup: Sean Penn film 'Superpower' catches Zelenskiy at moment of Russian invasion; And the winner is... London rolls out red... - February 25th, 2023
- Edward Snowden Reacts To Elon Musk's 'Pardon' Poll: 'That's A Very Big ... - January 6th, 2023
- NSA files decoded: Edward Snowden's surveillance revelations explained ... - December 20th, 2022
- Edward Snowden says he feels itch to scale back in to $16.5K Bitcoin - December 20th, 2022
- Edward Snowden Offers to Take Over as Twitter CEO for Salary in ... - Investing.com - December 20th, 2022
- Where is Edward Snowden? | The Sun - November 25th, 2022
- Edward Snowden, Elon Musk Optimistic About Bitcoin Despite FTX Collapse - Crypto Briefing - November 17th, 2022
- Snowden's newfound Russian citizenship reignites the debate of privacy versus safety in the US - Tufts Daily - October 15th, 2022
- Whistleblower behind Luanda Leaks, Malta Files and Football Leaks on trial - The Shift News - October 15th, 2022
- 'All The Beauty And The Bloodshed' Trailer: Laura Poitras' Golden Lion Winner Hits US Theaters Later This Fall - The Playlist - October 15th, 2022
- NYFF 2022: No Bears, R.M.N., All the Beauty and the Bloodshed | Festivals & Awards - Roger Ebert - October 15th, 2022
- From Bin Laden to Al Zawahiri: The evolution of Americas Targeted Killing Strategy - Indian Defence Review - October 15th, 2022
- Arundhati Roy on Things that Can and Cannot Be Said: The Dismantling of the World as We Know It - LiveWire - October 7th, 2022
- Billion Dollar Harvest: TikTok's Threat to National and Personal Security MARIST CIRCLE - Marist College The Circle - October 7th, 2022
- 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' Review: Politics of the Personal - slantmagazine - September 21st, 2022
- Congressional inquiry reveals secret Customs and Border Protection database of U.S. phone records - CyberScoop - September 21st, 2022
- The Most Controversial Biopics - IndieWire - September 21st, 2022
- VIDEO: Priyanka Chopra celebrated her husband Nick Jonas' birthday like this at the golf course, wrote - News84Media.com - September 21st, 2022
- From Bin Laden to Al Zawahiri: The evolution of Americas targeted killing strategy - MyVoice - September 21st, 2022
- At German artist Thomas Demands MOCA exhibit, finding the material in the ephemeral - Toronto Star - September 21st, 2022
- This is the jungle: Law enforcement slowly waking up to the threat of DeFi exploits - Fortune - September 13th, 2022
- Icarus: The Aftermath Review: A Tense and Affecting Real-Life Sequel - Hollywood Reporter - September 13th, 2022
- Fourth Amendment: The right to be left alone - Minot Daily News - September 13th, 2022
- Opinion | It Is Time to Throw the Monarchies of the World Into the Dustbin of History - Common Dreams - September 13th, 2022
- Do the FBI monitor peoples social media activity and online posts? Is it legal? - AS USA - September 5th, 2022
- Is Trump the Rosenbergs? - JNS.org - JNS.org - September 5th, 2022
- The Patriot Act: Mass Surveillance Before and After 9/11 - Privacy News Online - September 5th, 2022
- Can code just be 'disappeared' from the internet? - POLITICO - August 28th, 2022
- The Tech Industry Is in Its Whistleblower Era - The Atlantic - August 28th, 2022
- History As It Happens: The Espionage Act's sordid origins - Washington Times - August 28th, 2022
- The inside story of the CIA vs Russia - Asia Times - August 28th, 2022
- 'The rebels were sent to a lunatic asylum': These films end differently in China - Euronews - August 28th, 2022
- Erik Prince wants to sell you a secure smartphone thats too good to be true - MIT Technology Review - August 20th, 2022
- Judge orders DoJ to produce redacted version of affidavit in state secrets investigation of Trump - WSWS - August 20th, 2022
- How to Use the Signal App: Tips & Tricks - Online Tech Tips - August 20th, 2022
- Ruling Class Turns On Conservative Americans - The American Conservative - August 20th, 2022
- Signal Reveals Over 1900 Users Were Affected in a Recent Phishing Attack - Appuals - August 20th, 2022
- Despite resistance, WikiLeaks continues its fight for the truth - Independent Australia - August 20th, 2022
- The Republican party has reason to fear the midterms - The Guardian - August 20th, 2022
- Government pays arms firm that spied on activists to snoop on all our internet records - The Canary - August 20th, 2022
- Why is Australia risking conflict with China? - Asia Times - August 20th, 2022
- Edward Snowden, Russia's 'Disinformation Campaign' Drive 'Downhill' Narrative, Says 'Black Swan' Author - Benzinga - August 12th, 2022
- What Does All This TV Talk on Big Ten Do for Big 12 and Oklahoma State? - Pokes Report - August 12th, 2022
- From Defending the Open Internet to Confronting the Reality of a Fragmented Cyberspace: Reflecting Upon Two CFR Reports on U.S. Goals in Cyberspace -... - August 12th, 2022
- US Vows To "aggressively Pursue" Cryptocurrency Mixers - Nation World News - August 12th, 2022
- After cryptos crash and NFTs collapse, Web3 idealists race to prove that the dream of decentralization isnt dead - Fortune - August 12th, 2022
- Prescribing a New Paradigm for Cyber Competition - War on the Rocks - August 12th, 2022
- What is Monero (XMR) Crypto? Is Edward Snowden Behind This Project too? - CryptoTicker.io - Bitcoin Price, Ethereum Price & Crypto News - August 4th, 2022
- Russian hackers get the headlines. But China is the bigger threat to many US enterprises. - Protocol - August 4th, 2022
- Why Is July 30th National Whistleblower Day? - Privacy News Online - August 4th, 2022
- I may have to wait until I'm on my deathbed Panama Papers whistleblower - Namibian - August 4th, 2022
- Whatever Happened to the Transhumanists? - Gizmodo Australia - August 4th, 2022
- Julian Assange? Heres why I am not a fan of his - The Citizen - August 4th, 2022
- Who Is Edward Snowden, the Man Who Spilled the NSA's Secrets? - July 26th, 2022
- Why so silent? Edward Snowden has gone underground since Russia's ... - July 26th, 2022
- Kids spend the summer in STEM camp - Marketplace - July 26th, 2022
- Thomas Demand: The Stutter of History - Announcements - E-Flux - July 26th, 2022
- Empire of Hacking: U.S. is the Biggest Threat to Cyber Security - Xinhua - July 26th, 2022
- Edward Snowden Says 'We Are All Going To Be Billionaires' But... - Benzinga - Benzinga - July 18th, 2022
- Joshua Schulte convicted on all counts in second trial over 2017 leak of Vault 7 cyberwarfare trove published by WikiLeaks - WSWS - July 18th, 2022
- SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces:SMITHERMATAZ. Category: Public Comment from The Berkeley Daily Planet - Berkeley Daily Planet - July 18th, 2022
- Full Text of All Articles The Berkeley Daily Planet - Berkeley Daily Planet - July 18th, 2022
- Yes, data centers use a lot of water. But a Utah company shows it doesn't have to be that way. - Salt Lake Tribune - July 18th, 2022
- Edward Snowden - National Whistleblower Center - July 9th, 2022
- Commentary: The fight against excessive surveillance continues in Maine and across the country - Press Herald - July 9th, 2022