The cryptocurrency industry has grown rapidly over the past years, attracting hundreds of millions of users, triggered institutional adoption, and got hundreds of billions in investment dollars. Originally conceived as a peer-to-peer (P2P) medium for exchanging value, the use cases and underlying blockchain technologies have rapidly evolved beyond the storage and transfer of value. The promise of blockchain is vast and far-reaching, and many see it as the driving force behind the
next technological revolution that will transform financial services, media, transportation, and many other industries. Cryptocurrencies, for example, pose an early threat to oligopolistic card networks Visa and Mastercard, which have dominated card-based payments for decades, charging fees of 2% to 3%. Without the need for intermediaries, crypto payments can significantly reduce transaction fees and save merchants and their customers money.

Nonetheless, the practical benefits of crypto remain ambiguous since many projects, protocols, and companies are still in the experimental phase. There are significant risks and limitations in applying blockchain technologies to traditional products and services, corporate structures, and business models.

The cascading failures of crypto companies in 2022 serve as another reminder that this space still faces significant challenges. Even though crypto awareness is pervasive among most parts of the world, we believe that mainstream adoption is unlikely to occur until better guardrails in the form of established laws and guidelines are in place.

Taken from PitchbookResearch Crypto Launch Report