Hey Bergman,
I really like your write up, clearly a fair bit of effort went into this and there are some good concepts there that get the brain working!
I think you may have missed out one of the biggest points for 2018, it will be the year that Crypto goes mainstream. All around me I see it spreading, more and more people signing up and buying in, spreading the word. The overall market is going to go gangbusters this year , I have heard figures like only 3% of people own some sort of crypto (which seems like a lot). But whatever the figures, I think there's going to be a huge increase in the overall market and this affects all of your predictions.
Number 6, the Slaughter of Unicorns - I have my doubts on this one while at the same time totally agreeing with the concept (sound crazy huh). Well, longer term there will be a slaughter, as some of the currencies out there simply don't seem to make sense or have a realistic purpose that can't already be served by an existing currency coin. Having said that, the influx of new investors will prop up the unicorns (as they are affordable and highly speculative options with the "potential" for great gains), meaning that at least for the duration of 2018, Unicorns may expect a stay of execution.
Number 7, Very interesting, i think we just saw this with Kodak did we not?
Number 9, Tainted addresses, would this just increase the value of more anonymous coins, people will tainted addresses will just exchange for monero and then back into a fresh account of whatever other coin they want the trail goes dead?
ONE REALLY BIG issue I would like to see addressed in 2018 is how the volatility prevents your average business from accepting payment in crypto. Businesses need a mechanism that assists them with automatic price variability in line with current crypto value, but then the issue still remains that the price may drop wildly in a few hours... it may sound crazy, but is it possible we'll ever see a crypto with a price pegged to a tangible asset?
Thanks for getting my brain going this morning!
Thank you for the answer. If you like the post, is there some way to share it?
With mainstream, I don't know, at the end of 2017, friends and relatives, who have never been too much interested in crypto, started to ask me, and a lot of people asked me if I have become a millionaire, because they know I am in Bitcoin / Crypto (I'm not, unfortunately, and just for my own fault :). It seemed that Bitcoin, as a financial asset, is close to peak mainstream. I expect more of a crash than anything else, but don't like extreme price predictions.
Number 7, yes, I did not see the Kodak in front of the ICOs (German word, "you don't see the tree in front of the wood"). It is already happening.
A price pegged tangible asset? You mean, something like Tether, Stablecoin and various attempts to build a goldcoin? I think it is helpful, to create liquidity on exchanges, like tether did, but it ignores one of the most amazing aspects of crypto - the increase in value / the monetary policy.