2024: brace yourselves for a pivotal year.

I have a tradition of collecting my thoughts for the coming year and trying to capture my observations about what is ahead. This year, one can’t ignore world events and, in particular, the horrifying events of October 7th in Israel. More on this further down. 

Outside of these events, which have been occupying my mind constantly as of late, my 2023 predictions last year were reasonably accurate. Here’s the 2024 edition:

• Tech will continue to operate with newly found discipline and will likely do more with less again in 2024. The speed at which the industry changed its past operating mode of excess in 2023 has been stunning, and we will see the innovation engines roar again because of these changes. 

• This time last year, global recession risks were looming. Those may have been averted despite not being entirely gone. If inflation remains under control, the Fed will likely have to start cutting rates in the first half of 2024, and it’ll fuel a renewed phase of accelerated growth.

• As far as Bitcoin and Crypto markets go, I predicted that 2023 would continue to be a bear market, and it was, but we’re starting to see the tip of the bull’s horns emerging. The combination of a likely approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF that will fuel more demand, the next halving, and the emergence of real-world utility for payments via the Lightning Network could be the trifecta that drives the price of Bitcoin into the 6-digit territory for the first time in its history. 

• Speaking of the Lightning Network, I expect 2024 to be a landmark year. Bitcoin layer-1 high fees will push more transactions onto the Lightning Network, enabling more Bitcoin liquidity to flow to the faster, cheaper, private layer of choice for payments on Bitcoin. In hindsight, it’ll be the year the network turns a decisive corner.

• Connected to the above, a concept that I’ve been getting a lot more energy around is this idea, first heard from one of our investors, Ribbit Capital, of the Money Grid. An always-on, 24/7, fast, universal, open, global, cheap network that enables money to move natively on the Internet and enables a wide range of financial services to emerge. I naturally believe that this Money Grid will be built on top of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, and at Lightspark, we’re very focused on becoming one of the top players powering it. The Money Grid is more than Lightning and Bitcoin, though. It needs enterprise-grade services, compliance to enable regulated institutions to use it, connectivity with global on and off-ramps, and a user experience that relegates that underlying technology to the engine room rather than it being front and center as it is today. At Lightspark, we believe that Universal Money Addresses (UMA) will be a key capability of the Money Grid. A human-readable, asset-neutral standard that will help all institutions on the grid interoperate with one another seamlessly. The end-to-end solution for the Money Grid will lift the world’s GDP by enabling money to move without the insane constraints it is subjected to today. 2024 will be the year you start to hear more about it and will be able to start using it.

• 2024 will also be another year of non-linear breakthroughs for AI. We will see previously hard-to-imagine experiences come to life. I also get a lot of energy thinking about what developers will do by combining AI with the Money Grid to unlock the ability for AI agents to be transactionally enabled. Imagine outsourcing the entire planning and execution of a trip or a complex contract between two parties through the powerful combination of advanced LLMs with payment capabilities between autonomous agents. 

Switching gears to non-business, world events, and politics:

• First and foremost, I have to bring up the horrible attack perpetrated by Hamas on Israel on October 7. My thoughts are constantly on the families that have suffered unimaginable loss in such violent, barbaric ways and on all the hostages still held by Hamas. I also deplore the loss of civilian life on the Palestinian side. They, too, are victims of Hamas, its tactics, and its stated and acted on call for the eradication of Israel. I believe 2024 will be a pivotal year in the region, starting with a decisive victory of Israel against the terrorists of Hamas in Gaza. A Hamas-free era will begin in the region, combined with much-needed political change in Israel, that will pave the way for the potential of a better future ahead. I hope that Arab nations will help chart a path to sustainable Peace, which will involve rebuilding Gaza, giving Palestinians economic opportunities, giving Israel security guarantees, and finding an acceptable compromise for a two-state solution. This will most definitely not be resolved in 2024, but my prediction is that we will exit 2024 more optimistic than we have been in years for better days to come.

• Last year, I wrote that the war in Ukraine would enter a protracted phase and was unlikely to end. And that has proved accurate. I believe that in 2024, the West will conclude that Ukraine cannot definitively win this war and will have to concede that Ukraine has to remain neutral and won’t join NATO to find a path toward the end of this war that has proven to be so incredibly costly to US taxpayers. I expect and hope we will reach this conclusion by the end of the year. Meanwhile, we all need to watch Taiwan and China as the wildcard of the 2024 geopolitical agenda that could significantly upend world stability.

• Closer to home, I am tracking two things. The first is the definition of free speech in America. The second is initiatives trying to formalize doing good for society involving acronyms like DEI, EA, and ESG. It all started with good intentions — and there is no denying that they drove positive change in critical areas. Still, some, like DEI, have been coopted and have driven too many, especially in Gen Z, to have a simplistic monolithic view of the world, which involves putting people and groups in bad/good or oppressor/oppressed buckets without fully understanding nuances and historical context. In America, this has been partially behind the unprecedented rise of antisemitism, which is serving as an early warning system — to quote Bari Weiss — for worse things to come. Collectively, we must strive to course correct. Keep the good and reset the very bad.

• Finally, 2024 is Election Year in the US. To be honest, the fact that in the greatest nation on earth, we cannot do better than the current two likely choices for arguably the most important job in the world is depressing. My sense — or maybe my foolish hope — is that some unpredictable event(s) will happen between now and November that will reshuffle the top contenders by the time we reach the general election.

In summary, against a backdrop of conflict abroad and angst at home, we should strive to find more unity and turn a corner. On the positive side, it will likely be a good year for the economy, an excellent year for Bitcoin, the Lightning Network, and, by extension, for Lightspark.

I, for one, am incredibly energized with helping build this Money Grid alongside the most talented group of people. It will be such a positive force for good in the world. 

2024, here we come.