I'm not looking for extreme "meteor hitting the earth" or "nucelar holocaust" lol.
Although crypto did manage to pull through a pandemic.
I'm looking for more probabilistic scenarios of an endgame that would kill off crypto, or make it irrelevant enough and see Bitcoin back below $1k.
Here are the ones I came up with:
1- Lack of utility. Probability to end crypto: 1:20
One of the main worries in the early days of crypto was that Bitcoin wouldn't be practical enough, or have much utility outside of payment. Therefore no crypto would ever be useful.
But then more cryptos like Ethereum emerged, showing a whole world of new utility.
Along with cryptos showing that you could do instantaneous transaction at low fees, that are scalable, efficient, secured, and direct.
Those doubts about no utility beyond payment also were put to rest. There's now smart contract, DeFi, NFTs, utility tokens, governance tokens, interoperability, blockchain for business, and utility for every industry under the sun.
We now see a lot of companies interested in decentralization and removing middle men, and corruption and security vulnerabilities from a system.
So the probability of this ending crypto is vanishing faster each year.
2- Quantum computing. Probability to end crypto 1:18
There's probably a better chance of quantum computing helping improve security, and better yet, help solve the trilemma for crypto, than for it to end crypto.
Cracking a private key is still astronomically difficult even for the most powerful computer. Quantum computing will have an easier time guessing the next lottery numbers than cracking a key.
There's a better chance for hackers using quantum computing to drain your bank account, long before they can even get close to your private key.
Also, there is quantum resistance already being developed for blockchain, despite some arguing that it's not even necessary and it's merely a marketing ploy.
3- Cryptos losing their decentralization. Probability to end crypto 1:16
There's probably too many cryptos now for that to be able to end crypto. But if enough major cryptos lose their decentralization, it could kill crypto. It would be a pretty big coordination, and require entities with an ungodly amount of funds.
Or will people even care enough about them not being decentralized anymore?
However, in many cases, chains would simply fork, or people would turn to other more decentralized projects.
4- Crypto Regulation. Probability to end crypto 1:14
Regulation has been cooling off since 2018, and saw a lot more governments, politicians, and institutions warming up to crypto. Even a country adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender.
Until Gary Gensler came along. But it's more of a political game.
We did have much bigger bumps in the road in India and China, among several countries cracking down on crypto. But despite that, even within those countries, it hasn't killed crypto.
5- Tetherpocalypse. Probability to end crypto: 1:10
5 years ago, I would have said the odds were closer to 1:5.
But after what we know now (thanks to the black swan events we had since, the UST collapse, and what we now know about Tether), it looks more like Tetherpocalypse will be a major black swan event, but one that won't end crypto.
I made a post with a more detailed explanation about why Tetherpocalypse today isn't the same doomsday Tetherpocalypse was 5 years ago.
6- Full coordinated crypto ban. Exchanges, payment system, and bank transfer get cut off. Probability to end crypto: 1:6
If there was a crypto ban at the core where crypto exchanges were banned, using it for business, making bank transfer to an exchange, etc...it would be very crippling.
Of course, this would have to be done in more than one country.
You'd need to have at least the European Union, the US, Japan, China, India, Brazil, Russia, Australia, Canada, and many major countries synchronized and working together on this.
How often have we been able to get all these countries and regions to all agree on something?
And will people simply continue underground?
7- Crypto becoming obsolete from a tech leap. Probability to end crypto 1:3
If we were to have a groundbreaking leap in the evolution of blockchain, creating a different form of blockchain and crypto, like something taking DAG and Tangle to a new level, creating a gen 7 crypto that solves the trilemma, I think this is the one scenario that could potentially kill off crypto as we know it, and kill off the cryptos we know today.
