Pantera CEO Dan Morehead highlighted the potential development and worth of decentralized finance (DeFi), Web3 performance, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and metaverse purposes in his opening keynote speech at Token2049 in Singapore.

Hundreds of attendees converged on Wednesday on the Marina Bay Sands Conference Middle for the beginning of the two-day convention, which options distinguished audio system from the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem.

Pantera, a blockchain-focused funding fund with $4.5 billion of belongings below administration, mentioned it continues to see worth in rising crypto use instances. 

Morehead drew parallels to the early 2000s when rising expertise firms like Amazon, Apple and Google started to draw main investments after years of dominance by Microsoft within the inventory markets.

Pantera Capital CEO and founder Dan Morehead.

Morehead highlighted that whereas Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) dominated buyers’ cryptocurrency portfolios over the previous decade, he argued that new initiatives and use instances may promise even better returns on funding:

“We’re virtually on the level the place half of the whole market are issues that aren’t the 2 important blockchains and I’m nonetheless wildly bullish on Bitcoin and Ethereum. However I simply suppose these initiatives are going to carry out even higher and needs to be in somebody’s portfolio.”

DeFi, Web3, NFTs and metaverse initiatives maintain probably the most promise, in keeping with Morehead. The Pantera CEO additionally mused over the state of DeFi, which endured a troublesome few months following the Terra collapse and the contagion of now-defunct lending corporations.

Associated: Pantera to shut Blockchain Fund quickly after elevating $1.3B — double the goal

Morehead steered that DeFi’s present command of a $20 billion market cap, compared to the standard finance system’s $3 trillion means there’s loads of room for development within the sector.

The CEO was additionally bullish about Web3, given its deal with giving customers management of their information, in addition to platforms owned or ruled by communities somewhat than centralized entities:

“The present web is all about extracting worth out of you. There are additionally some sketchy governance points in large tech. I’m excited for a world the place folks create and add worth and all these networks really personal their information.”

Morehead went so far as describing Web3 as probably the most inevitable commerce he’s seen, highlighting the potential for decentralized variations of present initiatives at hand worth again to creators and customers.

The Pantera CEO concluded his presentation by underlying his perception that the present cryptocurrency market cycle is completely different from earlier years given sturdy fundamentals, pointing to some 200 million those that use blockchain-based platforms and cryptocurrencies, which may improve to at least one billion within the subsequent three years.