Although it took a long time, at the end of 2024, Bitcoin finally realized the predictions of countless people and successfully broke the $100,000 mark. If you want, pop the champagne. But I think that Bitcoin breaking this historic threshold is just the beginning, and bigger things are coming. I firmly believe that 2025 will be the long-awaited first year of decentralization.

The reason has little to do with Bitcoin's soaring valuation. Over the past year, anyone who has paid attention to the promise of centralized technologies in the past has witnessed an explosion of new use cases. Many use cases are quirky, others are cool, and still others promise to solve some of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. Together, they push the utility of decentralization into the stratosphere through measurable impact rather than mere guesswork. More importantly, they provide a compelling set of reasons for people to adopt and join decentralization in 2025.

Buckle up, here are my top five predictions for the year ahead.

1. Bitcoin is poised to soar
Without a bold prediction of Bitcoin's price, December would seem to be missing something. But instead of throwing around another $250,000 or $500,000 figure like everyone else, let's explore a more radical possibility: Bitcoin becoming the basis for a global strategic reserve.

The fundamentals support this possibility. If a world power (or unexpected power) officially introduces Bitcoin as part of its Treasury reserves, current price forecasts could be overturned. We're not just talking about $500,000; Prices of $1 million or more could become the new normal, with countries scrambling to get their hands on the world's rarest digital asset.

Even without geopolitical adoption, Bitcoin's scarcity alone makes it a unique asset. The number of bitcoins will always be only 21 million, far fewer than the $60 million millionaires in the world. With institutions and now likely governments buying large amounts of Bitcoin reserves, it will soon be very few people who want to own a single Bitcoin - unless they are smart enough to invest ahead of time.

Add to this the continued growth of Bitcoin's utility as a decentralized network and its role as a legally unstable alternative, and we are seeing exponential growth.

But here's the wild card: What happens when Bitcoin's price is no longer driven solely by the market, but by countries hedging against each other in the race for digital dominance? This is where things get really tricky. With several countries already piloting bitcoin finance programs, $500,000 could be just the starting point.

2. Depinners get rich quick
Admittedly, the cryptocurrency industry is sometimes not very good at communicating its vision to the outside world: slogans such as "financial sovereignty" mean almost nothing to ordinary people unless their bank accounts are frozen.

So, what about another Angle? Think about it: Decentralization allows you to make money doing nothing. Don't think this is a fantasy, because the Depinners have already done it. By harnessing and "farming" your computer resources, such as your phone's processor, anyone can earn passive income by contributing to a decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN).

The DePIN revolution is a perfect demonstration of how decentralization can change the concept of ownership and put (money-making) power in the hands of users. Just as important, it is spawning incredible new application cases that are addressing everything from tackling noise pollution to managing energy networks to natural disaster warning. Although DePIN is still in its infancy, its almost limitless application possibilities mean that early adopters will soon be able to earn passive income equivalent to 5% of the average person's income in 2025 - and all with little effort on their part.

3. Memecoins get serious
I predict that in 2025 there will still be "serious" financial commentators who dismiss memes as nothing more than overdone Internet jokes, but these financial commentators are not only wrong, they are ridiculously wrong.

In some ways, I can't really blame them: on the surface, most memecoins seem like a joke, especially the typical, ubiquitous DOGE. But ignore them at your peril: memecoin is growing fast, and they've outgrown their origins. The value of these tokens is not driven by speculation, but by their ability to bring people together for projects ranging from entertainment to politics.

In fact, memecoin can teach us a lot about the nature of community and participation in a decentralized world. By 2025, we'll see brands realize the extraordinary potential of memecoin to reach new audiences, foster new communities, and reimagine the relationship between business and consumers. To be sure, Memecoins can make money - but in the long run, their value to forward-looking brands will far outweigh their token price.

4. Time Magazine's Person of the Year -- Probably a robot
I predict that Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2025... Will no longer be a person. For the first time in its 98-year history, this annual award will go to what I call "Mrs Humanoid" - a composite character who symbolizes the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics and the integration of both into human society.

The humanoid robot (sometimes referred to as "gynoid") will represent the dramatic impact of artificial intelligence and robotics in fields ranging from health care to education, highlighting the ability of machines to gradually blur the boundaries of human-machine labor. Time magazine has chosen some controversial people in the past (such as its Person of the Year in 1938), but I don't think it's wrong to choose a robot. I even think it would be socially irresponsible not to put a robot on the cover.

The rapid rise of robots should spark a global conversation about the ethics of AI, how it works, privacy, and the redefinition of human identity. Many of these changes are positive, but there are also ethical gray areas, and even worrisome scenarios. Therefore, developing a new regulatory framework on how to address these challenges and seize the opportunities should be one of the most important issues of this century, along with climate change. Putting Mrs Humanoid on the cover of Time magazine will be an important step in driving attention to the issue, especially among regulators and lawmakers.

5. Traditional search loses to AI
Will 2024 be the last time we "Google" something we don't know? With the advent of Gen AI apps, there's good reason to think so.

Tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity represent the biggest changes in search since the advent of Google more than 25 years ago. Harnessing the power of AI not only leads to more accurate results (thanks to its ability to understand semantics), but it also changes the dynamics of search.

These new apps pass the Turing test with flying colors, enabling people to have meaningful conversations on topics ranging from cooking to philosophy. As such, they represent a fundamental change in our emotional relationship with technology, and make "traditional" search (exemplified by Google's long near-total monopoly) seem rather outdated.

Just as the advent of the Internet sparked an "SEO arms race" between brands vying for the first page of Google's search results, in 2025 we will witness businesses begin to grope for ways to stay relevant in the era of AI-driven search.

One of the biggest changes will be the evolution of websites, which will increasingly cater to AI agents rather than human users. In 2025, we will see domain names take on new significance, and the most successful brands will be those that can leverage on-chain domain names to protect consumer data, integrate AI capabilities, and deliver revolutionary online experiences to their audiences.

Whether or not all, some or all of these predictions are false, one thing is certain - as we enter the second half of the 2020s, decentralization is no longer a distant future, but an inescapable, integral part of everyone's present.