EXCLUSIVE: Do This To Predict Internet's Next Wave, Jordan Fried Says. A 1970s Book May Also Provide A Clue In Crypto

While some people are calling the last four weeks the darkest period in the world of cryptocurrency, declaring major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin BTC/USD as dead is nothing new.

Kicking off the 2022 Benzinga Global Fintech Deal Day, NFT.com and Immutable Holdings IMX/USD CEO Jordan Fried asked the audience to keep an open mind for the future of cryptocurrency and where fintech is headed.

“There’s a lot of FUD in the market for people who are scared,” Fried said, referring to fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Dark Times for Cryptocurrency: Fried mentioned the recent bankruptcies of FTX, Voyager and Celsius but reminded the audience that Bitcoin has been declared dead before.

“There’s a website that tracks the obituaries of Bitcoin,” Fried said.

Fried also joked with the audience that he is not related to Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX. “I feel like I have to say that at every event I go to now, which is unfortunate.”

Related Link: Is Immutable Holdings The Publicly Listed Berkshire Hathaway Of Blockchain?

Internet and Cryptocurrency Connected: Fried previously worked on Hedera HBAR/USD, a layer 1 blockchain that gained the support of major corporations like Alphabet Inc GOOGGOOGL and International Business Machines IBM.

The companies joined an LLC to take membership interest in the company and then run a layer 1 blockchain — a tough task in 2017.

“It was really the first DAO,” or decentralized autonomous organization, Fried explained.

Fried, who grew up when web pages weren’t very interactive yet, also discussed the internet's "original sin."

“The original sin was that it was illegal to do a transaction online,” he said.

The internet started as government-funded research that created this computer network, Fried said. Companies couldn’t sell items online at the time and had to begin to monetize through advertising.

“Encryption was also illegal" and reserved for the military, he noted.

The 1976 book “The Denationalisation of Money” by Friedrich Hayek called for a better form of money and could have predicted the future of Bitcoin, Fried said.

“Private companies in the free market could create a better form of money.”

Fried called web1 the read-only period with no interaction between users and web pages, web2 the period of read and write and a fundamental breakthrough and web3 as ownership or “the read, the write and the own.”

The transition from web1 to web2 to web3 can help solve the original sin of t he internet, Fried said.

What’s Next: The evolution of the internet and cryptocurrency is changing and innovations are helping to create an internet native payment mechanism.

“If we go back and study the history of internet from Netscape to NFTs and we can take what we’ve learned, those lessons, and predict what happens next,” Fried said.

Fried said that Bitcoin is native to the internet and the only way to end it would be to unplug all the servers and all the internet to shut it down.

The Immutable Holdings CEO is also excited that we’re seeing more smart people flock to Bitcoin.

“We have more talent, more brain power in the sector.”

Fried said people are working on problems using the power of web3.

“I do predict that we will solve some of the current problems.”

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Jordan Fried speaks Thursday, Dec. 8 at the Benzinga Fintech Deal Day in New York City. Photo by Gaspar Marquez.