Governments, enterprise, gaming: Who will drive the next crypto bull run?

In his monthly crypto tech column, Israeli serial entrepreneur Ariel Shapira covers emerging technologies within the crypto, decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain space, as well as their roles in shaping the economy of the 21st century.

The crypto market, just as any other market, runs in cycles. Even though digital assets are known, if not infamous, for being more volatile than many other asset types, their price action still follows a familiar pattern of ups and downs. Some of this, such as Bitcoin’s (BTC) four-year cycle, largely comes down to the algorithm’s intrinsic rules — more specifically, the halving of miners’ rewards. Off-chain factors, such as the U.S. tax-reporting rules, can also come into play.

Still, while the market’s logic dictates change, the logic itself remains largely unchanging. In other words, in the same way a bull run eventually runs out of steam and hits a plateau, bears eventually lose grasp of the market as well, giving way to another upshoot.

For now, of course, the market is still recovering from Terra’s crash and many other pressures that there has been no shortage of in the past few years. As fragile as its rebound attempts may be, and as red as every coin is compared to just a few months ago, the global crypto scene is hunkering down and powering on in wait for another bull run. So, where could it come from?

National governments

Just a few years ago, the very idea that Bitcoin could be legal tender in any given nation seemed like a far-fetched delusion. And yet, after El Salvador’s daring Bitcoin gambit, the Central African Republic (CAR) joined the fray in late April, granting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies the status of legal tender.

These two countries make for an interesting comparison. It’s by now common knowledge in the crypto space that remittances from abroad make up a major portion of El Salvador’s budget, and this fact was seen as the economic rationale behind the experiment. While reports suggest the process is shaky, the nation’s government does shop for Bitcoin, embracing the “buy the dip” stratagem.

With the CAR, things could not have been more different. The economy of the war-ravaged nation has been ailing for quite some time. Furthermore, only about 10% of the country’s population has internet access, according to World Bank data. In other words, the use of crypto will likely be restricted to a small portion of the population — and, given the geopolitical and local context of the move, the prospects can indeed be quite murky.

Still, more emerging economies may choose to follow suit, especially given that El Salvador is not the only nation leaning a lot on remittance transfers for budget cash. Even the fact that there is precedent for that is big enough to get the momentum going, and should even one more nation join the club this year, the crypto markets will know it.

Blockchain for institutions

While the early crypto rallies primarily came from private retail investors and traders, institutional investors have been joining the fray as well in recent years. From top banks and hedge funds delving into the crypto space to fintech giants adding support for digital assets to their platforms, institutional adoption is no longer a pipe dream — it’s reality.

Even the inside-baseball use cases, such as JPMorgan experimenting with its private blockchain meant for interbank use or a group of top information and communication technology providers tapping ClearX’s blockchain solution for data-on-demand services, matter. They add extra credibility to the technology powering the crypto ecosystem, which adds to long-term investor confidence.

Even though quite a few enterprise-grade blockchain projects will likely stay on private blockchains, the growing investor confidence in the technology is likely to…