Leading financial analyst, Yang Lan is a co-founder of neobank Fiat24.
In his recent end of the year review of future financial happenstances, he noted that “We’re so close to the end of 2022 and the collapse of FTX has everyone wondering: will this disastrous saga finally be the straw that breaks the camel’s back when it comes to choosing DEX (decentralized exchanges) over CEX (centralized exchanges)? I bet 2023 could be the year of the move from CEX to DEX: a Dune analytics report already suggests that the FTX bankruptcy “has led to a truly stunning uptick among DeFi protocols and decentralized exchanges,” with some DEX options seeing a near 75% user increase i just a few weeks.
“Should the move not be so quick, CEX will still be highly and strictly regulated, as lawmakers and legislators will keep a close eye on them moving forward. Client protection will understandably take priority over everything else, and clients’ assets will be safeguarded by banks more and more.
“Banks will also have a bigger role in verifying Soulbound Tokens, or SBTs, which I predict will become the main link between CEX and DEX in the economy of the future. SBTs are essentially digital identity tokens that cannot be transferred and make up the foundations of how we might come to rethink the very notion of “identity.” SBTs represent traits, features, and different parts of an individual’s life, for example either a “medical” soul for every health record someone could collect or a “credential” one containing their work history. They are a relatively new concept and I believe 2023 will be the year they go mainstream and conquer the crypto community’s heart.
“Lastly, we might see a bit of a battle between non-custodial wallets, which lets you have exclusive control over your assets as opposed to a service that keeps your funds safe, as these become more of a prominent concept and grow in popularity.”
