In 2023, “blockchain” will no longer be a marketing tool. In the past (2016-2022), companies were putting words like blockchain, digital currency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, etc., front and center in their pitch decks because it was helping them receive investment dollars.
But as 2022 comes to an end, it’s clear that those trends of the past are not going to persist into the new year. Why? Because most retail investors have lost significant amounts of money on “blockchain, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, etc.” projects, and many institutional investors that made equity investments are at a loss because the companies they have invested in have since filed for bankruptcy.
Blockchain trends 2023
These days, attaching the typical blockchain buzzwords to your pitch or business in some way, shape, or form tends to do your company more of a disservice than it does add value or increase interest in your offering(s). Too many investors have been burned by the blockchain buzzword offerings of the past that failed to deliver or underdeliver in a way that resulted in a loss on their initial investment.
This doesn’t mean that blockchain needs to be eliminated from your business if it is being used in a way that actually increases efficiency, reduces costs, grows the community, or increases brand awareness. However, it does mean that these aspects of the business don’t need to be over-marketed—or even marketed to audiences.
What needs to be marketed is the business solution that the company has created; why does the market need this solution? Why is it better than the existing solutions in the market? Why is the team that created the solution qualified to deliver this solution? Marketing those elements of the business and finding a way to communicate the value in the platform or service you are offering to the audiences that would find value in using it will go a long way in 2023.
Blockchain buzzwords: why did this phenomenon last so long?
The only reason the blockchain buzzword phenomenon thrived for so long was because most projects that used the buzzwords allowed investors to either take equity or buy coins/tokens from a company that was effectively IPO’ing. This allowed the investors to experience gains that rivaled those of being an early investor in a company IPO on a United States stock exchange. The major difference between blockchain buzzword companies and c-corps looking to IPO was that in the blockchain world, both the businesses and investors weren’t explicitly subject to the same lock-up periods that make it mandatory for them to wait about 180 days before they can sell their shares into the market. The companies using blockchain buzzwords could inexplicitly bypass the vast amounts of paperwork, underwriters, and more needed for an IPO to take place in traditional equity markets.
In other words, blockchain buzzword companies typically give investors a pretty good chance to make significant amounts of money in very short periods of time without having to jump through the hoops and navigate the waters that both businesses and investors usually need to work through when raising money and selling shares in both public and private markets in the United States.
2023 digital asset outlook
I don’t think blockchain was ever meant to be a marketing show-pony; in the same way that programming languages like JavaScript typically aren’t the front and center marketing pieces in most technology businesses, and similar to those programming languages, blockchain is meant to be used by businesses, somewhere in their technology stack or business operations to improve efficiency or reduce costs; or, if I’m being sympathetic to a lot of the consumer-facing applications that we see today, I will acknowledge that blockchain can be used to grow community, increase brand awareness, drive engagement, and boost sales.
With everything that has taken place in the digital asset industry throughout 2022, the sentiment and the majority of conversations around anything that screams blockchain or ‘crypto’ are negative. In 2023, businesses and investors are going to have to take a new approach; blockchain buzzwords are going to need to take the back seat while the services and platforms that have been created are going to need to be in the spotlight and occupy the lion’s share of the pitch and the marketing around it.
Watch: The BSV Global Blockchain Convention panel, Blockchain for Digital Transformation of Nations
New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeek’s Bitcoin for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoin—as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto—and blockchain.
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Patrick Thompson