The co-founder for Union Square Ventures, Fred Wilson published a blog post on New Year’s day titled “What is going to happen in 2019”. In that, he discussed varied topics such as bearish stock markets, a weakening economy, global financial issues, cryptocurrencies and more.

The following statement by him set a tone for the rest of the blog post.

“I believe and have been telling those around me that I think 2019 will be a “doozy.” I think we will see major dislocations in the leadership of the United States, a bear market in stocks, a weakening economy, a number of issues with the global economy including a messy Brexit and a sluggish China. All of this will lead to a more cautious stance by investors in the startup economy. And crypto will not be a safe haven for any of this although there will be signs of life in crypto land in 2019.”

He thinks that we are in the process of finding the bottom of the large, liquid, and lasting crypto-tokens. However, he thinks that process could take much of 2019 to play out. In his opinion, we might see some bullish runs, followed by selling pressures taking us back to retest the lows. The bottoming out process is expected to end in sometime 2019 which will be followed by a bullish run.

He added:

“Specifically, I think we will see some big name projects ship, like the Filecoin project from our portfolio company Protocol Labs, and the Algorand project from our portfolio company Algorand.”

The venture capitalist thinks that we will see a number of “next gen” smart contract platforms ship and challenge Ethereum for leadership in this super important area of the crypto sector. He also expects the Ethereum open source community to ship a number of important improvements to its system in 2019 and defend their leadership in the smart contract space.

To conclude, he said:

“There will also be pressure on the crypto sector in 2019. The area I am most concerned about are actions brought by misguided regulators who will take aim at high-quality projects and harm them. And we will continue to see all sorts of failures, from scams, hacks, failed projects, and losing investments be a drag on the sector.”

Although, that is always the case with emerging technologies that allow anyone to set up shop and get going. Permission less innovation produces the greatest gains over time but also comes with the inevitable bad actors and actions.

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