I will remember 2024 as the year blockchain broke through. The transformations started early and just kept coming. What’s astounding to me is that at no time during this year did the overall direction or the market change. The only thing that happened was constant acceleration.

At the end of 2023, we already knew that 2024 was looking likely to turn out well. The European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MICA) act was going to come into effect. This created a legal framework for crypto-assets, real-world assets and stablecoins in Europe. We were already seeing business turn up across the region in anticipation of this transformation.

And then as we entered 2024, the hits just kept on coming. The first Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decision to officially approve the Bitcoin ETF came 10 days into the year, followed by Ethereum in May. By the middle of the year, the conversation shifted from one of two cool things happening to a more general vision of global regulatory convergence: everywhere around the world, crypto, digital assets and stablecoins are becoming legally accessible to individuals and enterprises.

As if things were not going well enough, a string of regulatory and legal successes in the U.S. was capped off by an election that, among many other things, has sealed the direction and fate of this industry. It is not an exaggeration

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Author: Paul Brody