The billionaire investor Mark Cuban has pointed to the adoption of commercial smart contracts as the next catalyst to boost the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector.
Dallas Mavericks owner and crypto advocate commenting on the current “calm” state of the crypto marketcompared to the dot-com or internet bubble of the early 2000s, which saw a bunch of overhyped and relatively similar companies go under.
The cryptocurrency market is presenting quite a gloomy picture lately, as almost all of the top 100 digital assets have suffered double-digit losses in the last seven days.
There are likely several factors behind the bearish sentiments, such as recent Fed policy updates. However, on Twitter earlier today, Cuban also pointed to a current “imitation phase” in the cryptocurrency/blockchain sector as opposed to genuine innovation.
“Cryptocurrencies are going through the calm phase that the Internet went through”said.
Crypto is going through the lull that the internet went through. After the initial surge of exciting apps, NFTs, DeFi, P2E, we saw the imitation phase as chains subsidized the movement of those apps to their chains (ala bandwidth and storage subsidies by startups in the 2000s)
—Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 9, 2022
Cryptocurrencies are going through the same phase of calm as the Internet. After the initial wave of exciting apps, NFT, DeFi, P2E, we saw the copycat phase when chains subsidized the movement of those apps onto their chains (ala bandwidth and storage grants by startups in the 1990s). 2000)
According to Cuban, Blockchain projects that just “copy what everyone else has” bypassing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols will eventually die outsince it argues that they are not needed on all strings.
Instead, he thinks that business-oriented smart contract platforms replacing software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications will thrive in the long run:
“What we have not seen is the use of smart contracts to improve the productivity and profitability of companies. That will have to be the next engine. When companies can use smart contracts to gain a competitive advantage, they will. Networks that realize this will survive.”
Regarding the recent institutional endorsement of smart contract platforms, CoinShares cryptocurrency fund report for all of 2021 shows that Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), and Cardano (ADA) were the heavy hitters of choice last year.
According to the report, funds offering exposure to ETH were the resounding favourites, reaping $1.38 billion. Solana funds follow, with USD 219 millionwhile Polkadot products brought in $116 million and Cardano funds brought in $115 million.
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