It’s that time of the year again. Let’s talk about what is happening at Davos this year with all the world’s business leaders. This year is slightly different due to the giant crypto elephant standing in the room, namely, in the vein of FTX and every other failed titan this past year.
Leaders at the World Economic Forum did not hold back and expressed with great fervor their displeasure of everything and anything related to FTX. But not all things are grim at Davos this year. At least one expert at the upcoming World Economic Forum predicts better things ahead for cryptocurrencies after a “terrible year.”
While others are calling for global rules to crack down on cybercrime. The WEF event (often just called “Davos” for its hosting Alpine resort in Switzerland) is the place where heavy hitters from business/economics, politics, journalism, entertainment, and other worldwide institutions gather to shape global and regional agendas.
What Disparte & Other Leaders Think About Crypto
A Jan. 3 post about the future of cryptocurrencies penned by Dante Disparte, an exec at Circle Internet Financial, notes that 2022 was indeed a very bad year for crypto, seeing the evaporation of more than $2 trillion in the largely speculative market amid several highly publicized, large-scale failures.
However, Disparte likens the 2022 shakeup to the dot-com bubble in the 1990s that eventually burst with the elimination of many companies. “To the diehard crypto utopians (and some crypto-anarchists), 2022 was not just another ‘crypto winter,’ but more of an ice age,” he said.
Along with a broad loss of confidence, economic value, and a market littered with the tombstones of failed firms and projects, perhaps the era of crypto speculation will remain frozen in ice, giving way to a Cambrian explosion for responsible, always-on internet finance.
Is This Simply a Rough Transition Process?
“Just as it took the dot-com bubble bursting in the early 2000s to hand over the future of the internet to more durable companies, business models, and use cases, perhaps 2022 marks a handover of crypto technology and blockchain infrastructure to steadier hands.”
Along with that possible transition of crypto technology and blockchain infrastructure to more regulated and established institutions, Disparte sees them continuing to be integral parts of the modern economic toolkit. However, take that viewpoint with a grain of salt.
Lots of Business Leaders Pushing for Global Rules
Meanwhile, another Davos 2023 post explains “Why we need global rules to crack down on cybercrime.” The reasoning for that contention is presented by two people associated with the Igarapé Institute: co-founder Robert Muggah and associate Mac Margolis, also a Washington Post columnist. The Brazilian-based organization is a think tank focusing on emerging security and development issues.
Check out the following observations, which prove that cybercrime is at an all-time high:
- Deepening geopolitical tensions have increased the prevalence of so-called advanced persistent threats (APTs), which are becoming as sophisticated as they are pervasive.
- New technology is scaling up the reach and impact of cybercrime: malware and ransomware attacks (the latter threaten to publish data or permanently block it unless a ransom is paid) soared by over 350 percent and 430 percent, respectively, in 2020.
- Next-generation tools are bypassing antivirus programs, which is why living off the land (LOtL) attacks, in which attackers use legitimate software and functions to perpetrate malicious actions, accounted for almost two-thirds of all reported incidents in 2021.
- The main concerns are a scarcity of security experts, poor reporting habits, and a lack of global agreements about how to regulate cyber threats.
