5 reasons 2023 will be a tough year for global markets
2 min read
Those who come bearing warnings are rarely popular. Cassandra didn’t do herself any favors when she told her fellow Trojans to beware of the Greeks and their wooden horse. But, with financial markets facing unprecedented turbulence, it’s important to take a hard look at economic realities.
Analysts agree markets face serious headwinds. The International Monetary Fund has
Such disaffection has also prompted the rise in far-right populist candidates, most recently in Italy with the election of Georgia Meloni.
It has likewise provoked growing interest in alternative ways to access services. Homeschooling spiked during the pandemic. Then there’s Web3, forged to provide an alternative to traditional systems. Take the work in the Bitcoin (BTC) community on the Beef Initiative, which seeks to connect consumers to local ranchers.
Historically, periods of extreme centralization are followed by waves of decentralization. Think of the disintegration of the Roman Empire into local fiefdoms, the back-to-back revolutions in the 18th and early 19th century and the rise of antitrust laws across the West in the 20th. All saw the fragmentation of monolithic structures into component parts. Then the slow process of centralization began anew.
Today’s transition is being accelerated by revolutionary technologies. And while the process isn’t new, it is disruptive — for markets as well as society. Markets, after all, thrive on the ability to calculate outcomes. When the very foundation of consumer behavior is undergoing a phase shift, this is increasingly hard to do.
Taken together, all these trends point to a period where only the careful and opportunistic investor will come out ahead. So fasten your seatbelts and get ready for the ride.
Joseph Bradley is the head of business development at Heirloom, a software-as-a-service startup. He started in the cryptocurrency industry in 2014 as an independent researcher before going to work at Gem (which was later acquired by Blockdaemon) and subsequently moving to the hedge fund industry. He received his master’s degree from the University of Southern California with a focus in portfolio construction/alternative asset management.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
