A Crypto Christmas Special With Sheraz Ahmed: Past, Present, And Future

Reynaldo Marquez

Last Updated: January 1, 2024 2:02 pm

3 mins read

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Another year, another Crypto Christmas special for our team at NewsBTC. In the coming week, we’ll be unpacking 2023, its downs and ups, to reveal what the next months could bring for crypto and DeFi investors.

Like last year, we paid homage to Charles Dicke’s classic “A Christmas Carol” and gathered a group of experts to discuss the crypto market’s past, present, and future. In that way, our readers might discover clues that will allow them to transverse 2024 and its potential trends.

crypto Christmas bitcoin btc btcusdt btc price bitcoin price sheraz ahmed storm decentral house — BTC’s price trends to the upside on the daily chart but records some low timeframe losses on the daily chart. Source: **BTCUSDT on Tradingview**

Crypto Christmas With STORM: Bitcoin ETF Should Be Out Of Your Wishlist?

For today’s issue, our team got to chat with Sheraz Ahmed, Managing Partner at blockchain solutions provider STORM and founder of Decentral House. Ahmed has been present at some of the most important crypto events in 2023 and is constantly speaking with founders, organizations, and relevant actors within and outside the nascent sector.

Thus, Ahmed has a unique perspective on the industry, its blindspots, and possible catalyzers. During the interview, we talked about the downside of approving a Bitcoin spot Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) in the United States and why the space might be unprepared for a new bull cycle. This is what he told us.

Q: Our team has coincided with you in several crypto events this year; where do you think most of these events coincide? And what do you believe has been overlooked during 2023, a narrative, a project, something people missed as the industry enters another cycle?

Switzerland, Europe, Dubai, Singapore, and Rio (de Janeiro). I do believe that we are too early for the next cycle. The broken models of the last bull run are yet to be rebuilt. Infrastructure has improved, custody, wallets, exchanges, and stablecoins, but the business models for Dapps (Decentralized Applications) have not evolved.

I fear that we enter into another vaporware cycle and, at best have to wait 4 more years for real use cases/adoption or risk burning ourselves completely with shitcoins and scams.

Q: As Crypto enters a new cycle, what’s different about the industry when you compare it to early 2021 and 2017? Where can investors see the growth? Is it in the players joining the industry, the financial products, or in its community?

There is a bit more maturity, although that sometimes just feels like the veterans are just numb to the pain this industry can self-inflict. We do see genuine interest from large institutional players in the financial, consumer, and impact fields. But can we convert those ideas into adoption?

Investment in utility and payment tokens is an oxymoron. They are not meant to be investment products and are not regulated as such. An investor could look into an infrastructure play, although I believe that is quite saturated today at approx. $700M. My bet would be early-stage protocol ecosystem funds (equity-based), with a portion of that taken in tokens for the utility of governance, etc., that might be attached.

Q: The upcoming approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the US seems like the perfect indicator that crypto has made it to the mainstream, but what’s the next frontier? Where does the industry go from here?

I don’t agree. For me, it just sounds like the bankers finally believe they can make money off our industry. Now, does that mean it’ll be good for prices in the short term and more eyeballs? Yes. But be careful what you wish for, as when the heavy artillery comes in, they crush everything/everyone in their path.

In 2023, we founded Decentral House. An innovation centre focused on blockchain-based application that provide the infrastructure to spark ideas to life. I believe that by having the right tools in your arsenal, you can navigate the Web3 space to find the light at the end of the tunnel. Without the right guidance, WANGMI (We Are Not Gonna Make It). Let’s work together to create an industry of trust we can all be proud of!

Cover image from Unsplash, chart from Tradingview

Reynaldo Marquez

A literature major, Reynaldo Márquez has been deeply immersed in the crypto industry since 2017. His journey began with translating articles for various crypto news outlets, a role he took on with zeal. In 2018, amidst a challenging market, he embraced his first writing assignment, demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the nascent industry and the promise of change it bears for many people worldwide.
In March 2021, he joined the prestigious crypto news outlet NewsBTC and Bitcoinist, where he not only reported on the latest crypto news but also had the privilege of interviewing some of the industry's most influential figures. A year later, his dedication and hard work were recognized, and he was promoted to Managing Editor, a position he currently holds with pride.
He believes in honesty, good communication, hard work, and the power of cryptocurrency and its potential to transform people's lives, especially those alienated by the legacy financial system. Born in 1992 in Venezuela, Reynaldo is familiar with how governments and central banks can negatively affect people, their everyday lives, and their futures by creating inflation and erasing their hopes for a better future. Thus, like many Venezuelans, he embraced this new technology to help him and his family navigate difficult times.
In another life, Reynaldo would have pursued a career as an investigator, most likely tracking down the origins of the Cyberpunk movement with the publication of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer.’ The intersection between fiction and reality, with the materialization of Bitcoin in 2009, would have allowed him to dive deep into the crypto sphere as something more than a financial phenomenon but also a cultural shift in society that was brewing since the XX century, and maybe even sooner, in the XIX century with the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience.’
But that’s for another life. In this one, Reynaldo has been trading to improve his trading skills. Since 2023, he has been trying to learn Python to create successful strategies and find ways to execute them. It is a difficult task, which continues to keep him busy today and will most likely continue to keep him busy in the near and long term.
In his free time, he enjoys lifting heavy objects, reading, watching movies, and listening to his favorite music. Some of his favorite authors are Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Mario Vargas Llosa, Reinaldo Arenas, Rafael Cadenas, and many others. Lately, he has been primarily interested in reading about dystopic societies, a topic that deeply resonates with the crypto industry.
Since 2023, he has lived in Spain with his wife. He loves the weather, the food, and the people and their culture. They both expect to travel much more within the country they now call home and beyond its border. He hopes to retire with his wife, maybe in a quiet place near a beach, but most likely in a city close to a library and a university with his kids and, hopefully, grandkids.

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