THE FUTURE STORY OF BLOCKCHAIN
The price of bitcoin collapsed from 19000$ to less than 4000$ last year raising speculations over Blockchain technology that powers most crypto currencies by recording transactions without a central authority.
Despite this rocky road, many big players including IBM and Walmart are confident and pushing it ahead in need of innovative solutions around record keeping and secure transactions.
Blockchain was selected in Forbes 2019 Fintech 50 which will undoubtedly form some unusual alliance. Much like the Dot Com bubble of late 90’s and early 2000s, experts believe the collapse was part of natural “boom and bust” cycle and it will find its foot in larger economy.
Wild West of Crypto was only a transitionary phase and now drawing towards its close, time has come to reflect on the major Blockchain trends to watch for this year
1. Security Tokens:
The digital versions of financial securities like stocks and bonds, Security tokens, can let investors buy shares of popular Nasdaq-listed companies, including Apple, Tesla, Facebook and Netflix.
We expect to see the opening of exchanges with security token trading functionalities in 2019. However, it is likely in the early stages that liquidity will be limited.
2. The rise of Alternative Asset Classes – move from crypto to digital assets
With the market developing for Security tokens, there is an immense possibility of tokenization of liquidity-lacking, well performing assets.
SMEs and Real Estate Assets have robust returns but lack wide access. With over 90% of companies in operation globally listed as SMEs, the potential for growth is significant.
3. The creation of Decentralized Ecosystem Platforms and new business models
The traditional industries with over 50 trillion $ in revenue ( by 2025) would be replaced by new ecosystems according to a McKinsey study, 2017.
Not unlike e-commerce in the nineties, the vast potential for growth and disruption with decentralized P2P ecosystems is yet to be discovered.
In enabling efficient peer-to-peer transactions through shared APIs, the potential of a smart contract-powered decentralized ecosystem is vast.
All this makes Blockchain a very deserved candidate.
4. The real winners – Hybrid Models
At the end of 2018, blockchain remains the darling of the tech-savvy, but is still perceived as a vague, not-quite-understood, new entrant to the tech conservative.
The true winners of 2019 will be companies that are able to bridge the crypto and fiat worlds, enabling digital links between the two.
This linkage is a necessity across industries, from storage, trading, asset management of digital assets to real world applications of technology for the bystander, such as voting and land-registry.