The big villain of crypto has been caught by the patrol. After a five-week trial, the jury found Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of seven counts against him, including fraud, criminal conspiracy and money laundering. The fate of the ex-star of the sector seems sealed, even if his sentence will not be pronounced until March and he could appeal.
The fate of Web3 (crypto, NFT, etc.) remains unclear. Of course, the players in this sector are not responsible for the actions of a black sheep. And after the period of speculative madness which attracted opportunists and scammers into their sphere, many of them see in the current slowdown the opportunity for a healthy cleaning.
The bustling world of Web3 must, however, continue its exercise of introspection and provide clarifications if it wants to prosper in the future. The UFOs that are cryptocurrencies always evade labels. In its early days, Bitcoin enthusiasts mistook it for a new kind of untraceable cash. A hypothesis that fell apart when experts, joined by the authorities, developed techniques to make this blockchain speak. This has even proven to be a trap for criminals: if their identity is not recorded there, the fact that this “large register” meticulously keeps track of all exchanges offers investigators very revealing clues.
“The NFT market is changing face”
Today, new use cases are being highlighted. For example, the safety net that cryptocurrencies could provide in countries with fragile economies. Nigeria is thus the country with the second highest rate of adoption of cryptocurrencies, in the Chainalysis Index 2023. Cryptos are also of interest to people who regularly transfer funds to family in another country. Traditional systems sometimes prove to be as complex as they are expensive. In countries like France, which are well banked, with a stable political regime and a robust currency, the interest in cryptocurrencies is, however, less striking.
The world of NFTs is also in a nebula. The sector often highlighted that these non-fungible tokens had the advantage of automating the payment of royalties to creators, each time their work changed hands. But faced with the current slump, several players in the sector, notably the famous OpenSea, have reneged on their promise and made the payment of these royalties optional.
“It’s the end of a period of great excitement, the market is changing: speculative NFTs are declining while ‘practical’ NFTs are developing. Tomorrow, they will be used in very different and much more varied situations. By example, to transport our contacts and our followers on social networks from one platform to another,” Pierre-Nicolas Hurstel, CEO of Arianee, told L’Express at the end of August. Generally speaking, now that dreams of quick fortunes are fading, it is the entire Web3 sector that must succeed in showing more concrete use cases for the general public.