Kaspersky Predicts ‘Bubble-Burst’ for cryptocurrency in 2019

By Prashant Jha

The month of November has brought quite a doom for the crypto World, right from bearish trend plunging the prices to new lows, to threats from crypto hackers robbing people of their hard-earned digital money. In short, the crypto world has not seen any breakthroughs be it price or security in the year 2018. There have been a few optimistic souls who even predicted the costs to reach a new height, but alas, as the year approaches the end, they might have to eat their words.

Kaspersky, a security service provider, has been critical of the cryptocurrencies from the beginning and they seem to have gotten quite a few things right about their predictions made for 2018. The significant predictions were regarding security threats from cybercriminals in the form of ransomware, crypto jacking, and fraudulent ICOs.

Let us see how they fared on their predictions made for 2018

Ransomware Attacks

The prediction came out to be partially correct as the threats did loom over the crypto world in the first quarter of 2018. The potency of the risk was not as gravitational that the authorities could not get a hold of it. But, being an anonymous mode of barter, it is easy to target these people involved with cryptocurrencies. We would not call the prediction outright correct, but yes, it came true to some extent.

Cryptojacking

This prediction came out to be partially correct, as several cases of crypto jacking came to light in the year 2018. The attacks were not potentially a threat to an organization but rather individual based, where your computer is infected with a malware, which allows the crypto jacker to use your computer’s power to mine digital currency. The reason being, big firms can administrate their power consumption and what is going on behind the curtains.  This scenario would not be a preferable choice for a criminal as it might attract attention. So, we can say the prediction came partially true. However, crypto miners overtook ransomware when it comes to overall damage.

Fraudulent ICOs

Again the prediction was partially accurate, as the ICOs continue to be the primary source of capital generation for new entrants. However, there are many examples where a project collected tons of money through ICO but was not able to convert those potential ideas into anything groundbreaking. Many others fled as they could not translate what they have promised.

Kaspersky Predictions for 2019

Now, Kaspersky has come up with predictions for 2019, and the path does not look very bright, to be honest. Let us look at what Kaspersky believes about their forecasts for 2019 and how they reached upto that conclusion.

Blockchain Technology Won’t Last Beyond Cryptocurrencies

Blockchain as technology has always been predicted as something which can be incorporated into any industry. However, the issue here lies with the application and not the technology itself. The people who are the flag bearers of blockchain is more concerned about the by-product than the technology itself. Many experiments have been put up to check whether the blockchain can be tested beyond cryptocurrencies, but the results are not encouraging enough, and Kaspersky believes 2019 would see the end of the tunnel for these experiments.

Cryptocurrency Won’t Find any Real-World Use

The main problem with cryptocurrencies is that no one is putting an effort to make cryptocurrency a real-world entity. The bottom line is, you cannot put your digital money in daily use. Everyone in the industry is inventing new coins, and hoping that it’s interesting enough for people to bet their money on it. The crypto trade market is based on anomalies and can be manipulated because of the same reason. Someone with enough digital holding can start a downfall for one or uprising for another. This aspect of the crypto is the biggest threat to its existence

The 2017 Price Rise was Once in a Blue Moon Event

Experts at the Kaspersky lab believes, the 2017 skyrocket price was just a bubble and chances of it happening again are very rare. The reasoning behind it quite interesting, the experts believe that the prices in 2017 were dependent on the buzz or interest it created in the public domain. However, the limit has been reached in 2018, as the chances of crypto making an upward dive are very rare. The currency does not have any real-world use or a system where payment can be made in digital crypto money without any provisions.

Final Thoughts

The predictions look bold, but the reasoning behind it seems quite understandable and looking at the current trends, the chances of cryptocurrencies making a comeback will only depend on the groundwork put in by the crypto world. You can read the complete detailed predictions made by Kaspersky labs here