L'année dernière a été challenging for the blockchain ecosystem. On note une existential crisis for some, and a crisis of maturity for others. This time, the events are calling the sector into question.

Bitcoin has registered an increase in its value of 36% since the beginning of 2023. This increase is very far from erasing the staggering 70% fall it experienced in 2022. Over the past year, the succession of bankruptcies and unprecedented scandals that punctuated the cryptocurrency sector over the past twelve months. According to two leaders of the European Central Bank in a blog post at the end of November, “bitcoin is on the way to irrelevance.”

Thus, the multiple crises of 2022 seem to be undermining the original promises of cryptocurrencies and the new financial world that their defenders promised. The promise of perfect transparency also seems to run amok. All cryptocurrency transactions are public and traceable. The technology behind bitcoin is supposed to give this visibility, while a saver never knows exactly what a bank does with their money.

Bitcoin may seem invulnerable, but its ecosystem will have to adapt to continue to exist. Paradoxically, there is one category of actors that could take advantage of the situation: the traditional banking sector.