After almost the entire crypto market collapsed last year due to the bankruptcy of FTX, Celsius and Three Arrows Capital, experts are concluding that centralized lending and crypto products used to make money are becoming a thing of the past, writes Business Insider.

Experts shared their predictions for 2023 and explained that things could get worse for cryptocurrencies.

We can give this example: from 2018 to 2019, there was an 18-month bear market, or “cryptozyme,” among all cryptocurrencies. Experts expect there will still be a few rough patches in 2023, although there is already a renewed push for better, more robust solutions in this space, and this trend is expected to be a major theme in 2023, according to Phil Virtjes, head of strategy at digital asset trading platform Enclave Markets.

All eyes are likely to be on Digital Currency Group, a conglomerate that tracks the fortunes of heavyweights such as asset manager Grayscale and crypto brokerage Genesis, which has been criticized for some time after its lending arm suspended withdrawals last November. The firm felt the impact of the collapsed FTX when $175 million it owned got stuck on the FTX trading platform. Genesis said its clients rushed to withdraw funds after FTX declared bankruptcy, leading to a severe liquidity crunch. The impending collapse of Genesis is worrisome because most of its assets are held by US hedge funds. It will mean the end of an entire era as DCG, which has long been feared to be the last “knuckle” domino, will eventually collapse.

Genesis cut 30% of its staff on Thursday, with the cuts hitting the sales and business development departments the hardest. Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange that provided Genesis with funds, is trying to recoup $900 million in client money. And if a large firm like Genesis or its parent company DCG were to declare bankruptcy, the industry could expect major losses and liquidations.

So the biggest uncertainty today is the situation with DCG, Genesis and Grayscale. The collapse of FTX could lead to even more bankruptcies and lawsuits this year.

While it is still incomplete that the collapse of FTX or Terra and Luna has impacted the entire ecosystem, truly litigating the events surrounding the bankruptcy of FTX and its network of companies will lead to more lawsuits.

It is likely that with major market turmoil, cryptocurrencies could fall even lower than the worst periods associated with the collapse of Luna /UST /3AC and FTX to $12-13,000 BTC and $8,000 – $9,000 etherium.

We should also expect centralized firms that offered double-digit interest rates to exit the market, so it all sounds too good to be true. For example, centralized lender Celsius offered customers around 20% annual percentage yields on deposits, but the firm later filed for bankruptcy after a liquidity crisis in July. The one clear conclusion that experts have drawn is that centralized lending and products offered by such firms to make money are a thing of the past. It is still possible to generate attractive returns using web3 protocols and decentralized applications, especially in DeFi. Investors can turn to decentralized financing or DeFi protocols such as Aave and Compound, or decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap.