Cryptos face a decisive year in which scrutiny “will only increase”
With investors "burnt" and wary, calls for more regulation of crypto-assets will gain ground in 2023. The year will be critical, but "the interest will not disappear".
The public debate on regulating cryptocurrencies promises to gain even more ground in 2023, after two trillion dollars of market value evaporated in 2022, a year that goes down in history for the collapse of large projects. One was the FTX exchange, whose shock waves reached the four corners of the planet (although, to regulators’ relief, they did not threaten the stability of the financial system).
The new year began with gains for most cryptos, but the rises are very modest next to the plunge of more than 60% in the dollar prices of bitcoin and Ethereum, the two best known, over the year just ended. Central banks’ monetary policy and a less favourable macroeconomic climate will have contributed a great deal to this correction – but they were not the only causes.
AI translation from the Portuguese. First published in ECO on 15 January 2023.