Bitcoin and other decentralized technologies such as DePIN will really come into their own in 2025, forecasts the COO of Unstoppable Domains.

Dec 19, 2024, 6:45 p.m. UTC

It took a while, but 2024 was the year bitcoin fulfilled a million end-of-year predictions to finally hit $100,000. Uncork the champagne if you like, but I believe bitcoin’s breach of this historic barrier is the harbinger of something even bigger, and that 2025 will be the long-awaited Year of Decentralization.

The reason has very little to do with bitcoin’s soaring valuation. Anyone who’s had even half an eye on the decentralized technology landscape for the last year will have witnessed an explosion in new use cases. Many are quirky, others are cool and a few promise to solve some of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. Together, they are sending decentralization’s utility into the stratosphere via measurable impact rather than mere speculation. More importantly, they provide a host of compelling reasons for people to adopt and onboard to decentralization in 2025.

Buckle up then, as we take a whistlestop tour around my top five predictions for the year ahead.

1. Bitcoin takes a shot at the moon.

It wouldn’t be December without bold predictions about bitcoin’s price. But instead of tossing out another $250K or $500K figure like everyone else, let’s explore a more radical possibility: bitcoin becoming the foundation of a global strategic reserve.

The fundamentals support this possibility. If a major world power (or an unexpected one) officially adopts bitcoin as part of its treasury reserves, the current price predictions could bUe obliterated. We’re not just talking $500,000; $1 million or even higher could become the new normal, driven by nations’ scrambling to secure the world’s rarest digital asset.

Even without geopolitical adoption, bitcoin’s scarcity alone makes it a unique asset. There will only ever be 21 million BTC in existence, a far smaller number than the 60 million dollar millionaires worldwide. With institutions and now potentially governments buying up huge reserves of bitcoin, it’ll soon be a tiny minority who can hope to own just one — that is, unless they were smart enough to invest early.

Add in the continued growth of bitcoin’s utility as a decentralized network and its role as an alternative to fiat instability, and we’re looking at exponential growth.

But here’s the wildcard: what happens when bitcoin’s price is no longer driven just by markets, but by nations hedging against each other in the race for digital dominance? That’s where things truly get edgy. With several countries already piloting bitcoin treasury programs, $500,000 might just become the starting point.

2. Depinners get rich, quickly.

Someone has to admit it: the crypto industry sometimes does a bad job of selling its vision to the world. Phrases like “financial self-sovereignty” mean little to the average person in the street — unless, of course, they’ve had their bank account shut down.

So how’s this for a sales pitch? Decentralization enables you to earn money for doing absolutely nothing. No, it’s not too good to be true, because that’s what Depinners are already doing. By harnessing and “farming” your computer resources, such as the processor on your phone, anyone can earn passive income by contributing to the new paradigm of decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN).

The DePIN revolution is a superb example of how decentralization transforms the concept of ownership and puts (earning) power into people’s hands. Equally important, it’s sparking incredible new use cases that are already solving problems from noise pollution to energy grid management to natural disaster alerts. Even though it’s still in its infancy, the almost infinite possibilities of DePIN applications mean that in 2025 early adopters could soon be earning up to 5% of the average person’s income — all without lifting a finger.

3. Memecoins get serious.

Here’s a prediction for what won’t happen in 2025: “serious” financial commentators still won’t accept that memecoins have any utility, or that they are anything other than an internet in-joke that went too far. And they’ll be increasingly, hilariously wrong.

In some respects, I can’t really blame them: on the face of it, most memecoins seem like a joke, especially the quintessential, ubiquitous DOGE. But ignore them at your peril: memecoins are growing up fast and they are evolving beyond their origins. These tokens’ value is driven less by speculation than by their ability to bring people together on projects ranging from the playful to the political.

In fact, memecoins have a great deal to teach us about the nature of community and participation in the decentralized world. In 2025, we’ll see brands wake up to memecoins’ extraordinary potential to reach new audiences, foster new communities and reimagine the relationship between businesses and consumers. To be sure, there’s money to be made in memecoins — but over the long-term, their value to forward-looking brands will be much more significant than their token price.

4. Time Magazine chooses an Android of the Year.

In 2025, I predict that Time Magazine's Person of the Year…won’t be a person at all. For the first time in its 98-year existence, the annual award will go to what I’m calling “Mrs Humanoid” — a composite character symbolizing the rise of AI and robotics, and the integration of both into human society.

This humanoid robot (or “gynoid,” as they’re sometimes referred to) will represent the incredible impact that these twin technologies are making across a range of sectors, from healthcare to education, demonstrating capabilities that blur the lines between human and machine labor. Time Magazine has chosen some controversial characters in the past (check out its 1938 “Person of the Year”), but I don’t think there’s anything remotely strange about choosing a robot. I’d even go a step further and say that it would be irresponsible to not put one on the front cover.

The rapidity of the rise of robots’ should be sparking global discussions on the ethics of AI, as well as how work, privacy and human identity are being redefined. Many of these changes are incredibly positive, some are morally gray or still obscure, and a few are potentially incredibly alarming. This conversation should therefore take place alongside climate change as one of the defining issues of our century. Putting Mrs. Humanoid on Time’s cover would be an important step towards focusing minds, especially regulators’ and legislators’, about how we develop new regulatory frameworks to address the challenges and seize opportunities presented by such advanced AI systems.

5. Traditional search loses ground to AI.

Will 2024 be the last year we “Googled” something we didn’t know? With the advent of Gen AI applications, there’s every reason to think so.

Tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity represent the biggest change to search since the emergence of Google a quarter of a century ago. Harnessing the power of AI not only enables more accurate results, thanks to its ability to understand semantics, but also changes the dynamics of search.

These new applications pass the Turing Test with flying colors, enabling people to have meaningful conversations about everything from cooking to philosophy. As such, they represent a fundamental change in our emotional relationship with technology, and make “traditional” search — as exemplified by Google’s long, near-total monopoly— look positively prehistoric.

Just as the emergence of the internet sparked an “SEO arms race” among brands fighting for that all-important first results page of Google, in 2025 we’ll see businesses begin to figure out how to remain relevant in the age of AI-powered search.

One of the biggest changes we’ll see is the evolution of websites, which will increasingly cater to AI agents rather than humans. In 2025, we’ll see web domains take on a new significance, with the most successful brands being those that harness onchain domains to safeguard consumer data, integrate AI functionality and deliver revolutionary online experiences for their audiences.

Whether all, some, or none of these predictions come to pass, one thing is beyond doubt — as we cross into the latter half of the 2020s, decentralization is no longer the future; it’s about to become an inescapable, inextricable part of everybody’s present.