Out of the Ashes: Four Trends to Shape Crypto in 2020

This post is part of CoinDesk’s 2019 Year in Review, a collection of 100 op-eds, interviews and takes on the state of blockchain and the world. Charles Hayter is co-founder and CEO of digital asset data platform CryptoCompare. The views expressed here are his own.

Cast your minds back to the beginning of 2019, and the tenth anniversary of the mining of the bitcoin genesis block. The industry had very little to celebrate. Prices had sunk to new lows, while startups and even some of the industry’s heavyweights were beginning to feel the pinch.

There is a plethora
of factors that drive interest in cryptocurrency. Two major dynamics are market
volatility and clear examples of mainstream adoption. But there was little of
either as the industry entered the new year: large-cap coins flatlined and
volumes hit rock bottom. Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan
Stanley quietly shelved plans to offer cryptocurrencies to their institutional
clients. It seemed people had simply…