The Future of Cryptocurrency In The Next 10 Years

You may not likely become a Crypto billionaire anytime soon, but this technology will probably be part of how you invest, transact and so much more in the next decade.

At least, that’s what Joe Duran, founder and CEO of United Capital, thinks of the Blockchain, the nascent technology that underlies cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. Blockchain acts as an open ledger that tracks every transaction that has taken place with a given cryptocurrency. It can’t be altered. Duran compared it to a digital version of the book log used at a library, where you can see who borrowed a book and who returned it. “Blockchain itself is going to be part of every transaction that occurs in the world,” he said. “It’s going to take a decade before it’s there.”

So let’s start talking about bitcoin prediction about where this market is headed and how We think it will impact us.

The Future of Cryptocurrency In The Next 10 Years

1. Crypto Has Chance of Becoming ‘Digital Gold’

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said cryptocurrencies could stay a feature of global markets as something akin to “digital gold,” even if their importance in economies will remain limited.

During the third week of May 2021 in which Bitcoin whipsawed, Summers told Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin that cryptocurrencies offered an alternative to gold for those seeking an asset “separate and apart from the day-to-day workings of governments. ”Gold has been a primary asset of that kind for a long time,” said Summers, a paid contributor to Bloomberg. “Crypto trading signals have a chance of becoming an agreed form that people who are looking for safety hold wealth in. My guess is that crypto is here to stay, and probably here to stay as a kind of digital gold.”

If cryptocurrencies became even a third of the total value of gold, Summers said that would be a “substantial appreciation from current levels” and that means there’s a “good prospect that crypto will be part of the system for quite a while to come.” Comparing Bitcoin to the yellow metal is common in the crypto community, with various estimates as to whether and how quickly their total market values might equalize.

Yassine Elmandjra, crypto analyst at Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management LLC, said earlier during May 2021 that if gold is assumed to have a market cap of around $10 trillion, “it’s not out of the question that Bitcoin will reach gold parity in the next five years.” With Bitcoin’s market cap around $700 billion, that could mean price appreciation of around 14-fold or more.

Why Bitcoin Is A Superior Store Of Value

A store of value is an asset, commodity, or currency that maintains its worth and therefore can be exchanged in the future without deteriorating in value.

In this category of store of value assets, gold has been the “gold standard” (sorry, couldn’t resist). Gold has been a store of wealth for thousands of years and has outlasted the currencies of various empires and nation-states that have come and gone. Many currencies, including the dollar, were pegged directly to gold. However, this limited the government’s ability to provide financial aid (aka, print more money) and in 1971, the gold standard was abandoned by the US. Since then, the value of a dollar has steadily declined while gold has risen from $35 per ounce to over $1,800 as of January 2021.

I think it’s also worth noting that gold was not a global monetary standard that was chosen by any one person or entity. Governments only recognized gold as a monetary value once the market had adopted it. By the end of the 19th century, gold emerged as a clear, universal monetary medium used around the world due to a number of intrinsic properties. That is until now. By every measure other than adoption (for now), Bitcoin is a better store of value than gold.

Scarcity, Constant and Predictable Supply Schedule, Verifiable and Storable – more reasons why Crypto has a chance of becoming digital gold – Click here for further reading.

2. Bitcoin Will Not Replace The U.S. Dollar

One of Bitcoin’s most important features — if not the most crucial feature of all — is permanent scarcity. The Bitcoin supply is immutably fixed. Once a certain number of Bitcoins are mined (approximately 21 million), there will never be any more. In contrast, with fiat currencies, the supply is not at all fixed. Instead, it is the opposite: The fiat currency supply can be expanded at will. This is a feature, not a bug. Expansion of the currency supply is sometimes a helpful thing.

With a fiat currency system, Congress can simply issue new debt and send out the funds. That is, in fact, what happened in response to the coronavirus crisis. Congress decided to spend the money, and immediately did so. That useful ability — the ability to respond quickly in a crisis — is a function of a system with an expandable fiat currency supply.

So fiat currencies, in a way, provide a kind of credit lifeline for an economy that needs one. The alternative to having this lifeline can be extreme economic pain, or even a shock-induced deflationary collapse. It is good, not bad, to have a government with flexibility to respond to emergency events. No sovereign government with the ability to issue its own currency will voluntarily give up that right — and nor should it. As we have explained, it is useful to have the ability to spend at will in the event of a national emergency, and it is also helpful to have a slowly expanding currency supply that matches the natural rate of economic growth (because human nature does not do well with downward wage adjustments).

In this world, sovereign governments can maintain access to the positive side of fiat currency issuance. They can issue more currency as needed to help the economy in emergencies, and they can grow the currency supply in accordance with growth (which is a healthy thing to do).

Further Reading – Bitcoin Will Not Replace The U.S. Dollar

3. Paying Employees Could Be More Convenient With Cryptocurrency

Having to handle payroll for a team of employees who live in many different parts of the globe can be a massive hassle as a remote team employer. Imagine having to convert your dollars into dozens of international currencies to pay your employees.

Making cross-border transactions is not nearly as much of a burden as the fees for changing the currency. With cryptocurrency, instant transactions across borders with minimal-to-no fees are now a reality. Since Bitcoin transactions are public, all parties can view the transaction details and immediately know the status. Cutting out banks saves both the employer and employee money and can be a big win-win for the workforce.

4. The Gaming Industry Will Emerge As A Major Use Case

In the gaming industry, the decentralized, steady and secure properties of blockchain can make it a popular tool as games — and their growing assets — become more complex. As developers build new games or in-game advancements, blockchain is set to improve the user experience through ownership, globalization and more.

Game developers are continuously expanding the pool of in-game purchases, extending playtime by enticing gamers with the objective of earning these assets. But currently, despite hours of effort to earn these in-game tools and upgrades, gamers still do not own the digital assets. Developers are able to change — or even remove — the assets at their discretion.

Blockchain-enabled developments can transfer the ownership to the players. Smart contracts, which are lines of code stored on blockchain that can automatically execute when the predetermined conditions are met, allow assets to be automatically transferred to the player. The immutability of blockchain data means that with smart contracts, developers cannot take these assets back. With this development, gamers are therefore able to monetize their skills — selling their game-winning digital assets, exchanging with or even buying from other players to progress in their favorite games.

Click here for Further Reading – The Future Gaming Industry Will Emerge As A Major Use Case For Crypto

5. DEFI – Is The Future Of Finance Decentralised?

Decentralized finance—often called DeFi—refers to the shift from traditional, centralized financial systems to peer-to-peer finance enabled by decentralized technologies built on the Ethereum blockchain. From lending and borrowing platforms to stablecoins and tokenized BTC, the DeFi ecosystem has launched an expansive network of integrated protocols and financial instruments. Now with billions of dollars worth of value locked in Ethereum smart contracts, decentralized finance has emerged as the most active sector in the blockchain space, with a wide range of use cases for individuals, developers, and institutions.

Whereas our traditional financial system runs on centralized infrastructure that is managed by central authorities, institutions, and intermediaries, decentralized finance is powered by code that is running on the decentralized infrastructure of the Ethereum blockchain. By deploying immutable smart contracts on Ethereum, DeFi developers can launch financial protocols and platforms that run exactly as programmed and that are available to anyone with an Internet connection.

The breakthrough of DeFi is that crypto assets can now be put to use in ways not possible with fiat or “real world” assets. Decentralized exchanges, synthetic assets, and flash loans are completely novel applications that can only exist on blockchains. This paradigm shift in financial infrastructure presents a number of advantages with regard to risk, trust, and opportunity.

DEFI Analogy

To illustrate what DEFI is (and what it defInitely is not!) Let’s use a simple example. You want to pay your friend who is a baker for some sourdough bread, they offer you the opportunity to pay with your debit card via iZettle, so you tap your debit card to the terminal.

The process of transferring money between you and your friend needs your bank, your friend’s bank, a payment network (like VISA or Mastercard) and the terminal/gateway provider. This is NOT DEFI. The delivery mechanisms in this case are all centralised (and there are many of them). A decentralised version of the same transaction would see your digital wallet interacting with your friend’s digital wallet directly and the transaction then being verified on a distributed ledger that is not owned by one company or organisation.

A peer to peer payment is really the most basic example to describe DEFI, however with the use of smart contracts, DEFI projects are diversifying into evermore complicated areas of finance from lending to trading, savings to insurance… and more. Many centralised financial systems are antiquated and slow… ever tried to send money to another country or drawn down from a stocks and shares ISA? There is no technological reason that these transactions shouldn’t occur within milliseconds, but they can take anything from 2-5 days.

But it isn’t just pace and modernity that can be the justification for DEFI, think about security. Centralised systems (especially antiquated ones) can be vulnerable to a new generation of nefarious hackers. Reputable financial institutions and their centralised systems can be vulnerable to data breaches, fraud and security issues. And it is customers who initially suffer in these security breach situations, by being locked out of their apps, their digital banking and being reissued cards.

DEFI aims to address the three pronged problem within crypto finance of Scale, Pace and Security, all whilst remaining completely decentralised.

The Current and Future Projections for DeFi – Click here for further reading.

6. How NFTs – Non-Fungible Tokens – Will Change the World in The Future

If you’ve heard about Cryptopunks, Hashmasks, NBA Top Shots, or even celebrity tweets being sold for millions, then you’re likely already aware of the craze around NFTs – Non-Fungible Tokens.

What is NFT?

NFTs are not cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin or Ether are the native payment currencies of a blockchain, a chain of blocks produced by miners that represents an incorruptible ledger of transactions. Platforms such as Wirex allow you to buy, hold and exchange different cryptocurrencies, meaning you can use them to purchase just about anything.

However, unlike NFTs, cryptocurrencies are deemed fungible, interchangeable, and indistinguishable, like any commodity or traditional currency. You can trade one Bitcoin for another, and both Bitcoins will always be worth exactly the same as each other.

On the other hand, an NFT is a unique token that is conceived, for the large majority, on the Ethereum blockchain. As such, NFTs are governed by Ethereum smart contracts, and transfers of ownership are written into the blockchain. These smart contracts are made up of a specific code which contains all the essential information and handles all the important actions relating to an NFT such as its transfer and verification. These actions constitute the foundation of Ethereum’s ERC-721 protocol, wherein the uniqueness of an NFT is DEFIned by the information stored within the NFT’s metadata, among which is a ‘token ID’ that points to an image, web domain, artwork or any valuable digital resource.

In short, an NFT is an untampered and tamperproof certificate of authenticity and ownership. It is used for instance by WISeKey or Arianee to track the provenance of luxury goods, by yInsure to create tradable insurance policies, or by Ethereum Name Service to track domain ownership.

The monthly volume of NFTs traded has exploded since September 2020 and has grown from a few million to $241 million, as recorded by NonFungible. The NFT craze is a phenomenon that is shaking the traditional art, game, sports, and insurance sectors with the markets being accessible to anyone ready to open an Ethereum wallet and connect to the blockchain. Case in point – In February 2021, a LeBron James dunk sold for $208,000 on NBA Top Shots and Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for $2.9m.

More About NFT’s and its future use cases can be accessed in this article.

7. We’ll Definitely See A Shift Towards A Less Volatile Market

We’ll definitely see a shift to a less volatile market where gains of a 100x are simply not possible. People need to be educating themselves a lot right now because this will be a harder market to trade sooner rather than later. Traders need to be accumulating as much trading edge as much as they can because more smart money is gonna enter the space.

They point here is learning trading strategies and using resources correctly will be critical because Institutional money is gonna enter the space real soon – which leads to our next prediction:

8. Institutional Money Is Going To Hit This Space Hard

This is good or bad for the average retail trader. For one, if you’re investing in large or mid-caps, you’ll likely see your portfolio balloon easily in the double digit multipliers over the next 10 years. It’s gonna be great for the guys preaching HODL (Hold On For Dear Life) and they’re definitely right. I think it’s easy to guess that trillions of dollars will be injected in the coming space for years.

But here’s the thing, if you are trading, you are gonna get run over by the bus called “institutional traders”. They’ve got more experience, they’ve got better tools and they’ve got bigger order sizes than you. There’s no way You can out-leverage them. The stock market is already their playground. What do you think they are gonna do once they are given the green light to trade in an immature market like crypto? Let that sink in.

9. The Government Is Coming

Many Governments will not sit-by and lose control of their money supply without giving a vicious fight. Governments will lose the battle in the long run. But definitely over the next 10 to 20 years, expect a very strong Government cryptocurrency to come to power and dominate for many, if not for most of the people in the world.

When it comes to decentralized cryptocurrencies like you and I trade, the average person has about zero understanding of just about anything that actually matters with regard to those and they actually don’t see the need for privacy and security.

Case in point – Look at Facebook, where people are more than happy to give away their information and privacy. Side note here, if it’s free, you are the product. You see, Data is the new oil and we’re going to see an arms race to capture as much of it as possible. Corporations are gonna be more skilled in invading people’s lives and collect every packet of data from them, and that’s just the start. With Crypto, You just know there’s tons of possibilities. For instance, right now, there’s 80 Trillion Dollars worth of Fiat currency in the world. We believe crypto will expand that market and eventually maybe even be larger than Fiat Currencies.

But here’s the thing, I predict that government cryptos will make a huge part of that as well. Government crypto will represent a total and complete corruption of the idea of checks and balances that decentralized currencies represent, but it won’t matter, they’ll do it anyway. In fact, instead of distributing power, they’ll look to concentrate even more power and they’ll do this by giving themselves the ability to track every citizen’s spending with impunity and automatically collect taxes from wages and sales of goods and services.

We are sure every Authoritarian government is racing to build an official state-owned cryptocurrency. As for the more democratic countries, I’m sure they can’t wait to have their own cryptocurrencies in their citizen’s pockets as soon as possible. They’ll absolutely outlaw our existing means of exchange and they’ll do it under the guise of one of three reasons – stopping crime, stopping money laundering or stopping terrorists.

Do you think it’s wrong? Let’s look at history, for example the United States Gold Reserve act of 1934 required that all gold be surrendered and be vested to the sole title of the United States Department of the Treasury. The important thing to note here is that the Gold Reserve act outlawed the most private possession of Gold, forcing individuals to sell it to the treasury. how does cryptocurrency gain value.

So as you can see, Governments are freely able to find what is and what is not money. They are able to impose such will because people allow it and they believe the narrative. The fact is, people will allow government-issued cryptocurrencies to become the means of exchange in modern society with all the anti-privacy implications it brings. While Crypto has obvious benefits, we must recognize that there are very scary connotations to this technology.

10. Crypto Will Be Much Easier To Use

It’s no secret that today’s crypto user experience is AWFUL! If we mistype something or paste a key wrong, money disappears forever. If there’s a software glitch, money disappears forever. If someone hacks my computer or phone, money disappears forever. See the pattern? There’s no degree of forgiveness in today’s current state of crypto.

Yes, you may be the bank and there’s so much power there, but the average person really can’t be trusted with so much power because they don’t know how to effectively use it.

We still don’t have a solution that’s guaranteed to work in 5, 10, 20 years. I mean what happens when quantum computers come out? And we need to completely update the basic protocols that underscore the system. The average person will never be able to do these procedures. Even worse, there’s no way to reverse a transaction or secure it against mistakes.

Look, if your grandma can’t do it, forget it. When it comes down to it, all these systems that combine all the features of the old system plus brand new features achieve mass adoption. We’re not doubtful that crypto will become easier, but this has to be the #1 priority for crypto right now.

Conclusion

Crypto will be both good and evil like everything in life. Crypto’s revolution is just beginning, which means change is the only guarantee. if you can think it, if you can imagine it, chances are somebody, somewhere is building it. The internet of money is really here so you best not bet against it. best penny cryptocurrency to invest in 2021

If you are watching this space, you are watching the future literally being built before your eyes. Just don’t expect it to arrive anytime soon. Just enjoy the ride, while we boldly go where no one has ever gone before.