A look at blockchain and digital assets, its trends, market analysis and future outlook
By Nikhil Goyal
Be it Bitcoin, Dogecoin, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or Stablecoin, we’re nowadays surrounded by digital assets. Their rise in popularity has been so rapid that almost anyone with the means is looking to jump on board.
And unlike most of us believe, blockchain technology is not just limited to the creation of these assets; it’s in fact a market-disrupting technology with a much wider use case.
Read: As Bitcoin loses steam, blockchain moving into next generation (September 10, 2021)
Blockchain technology is being used to drive innovation in a variety of industries, including finance, healthcare, entertainment, and even global governments.
And although it made its debut back in the 90s, blockchain didn’t gain mainstream recognition until the launch of Bitcoin in 2009. Its development and popularity since have been off the charts.
So much so that someone, somewhere is constantly creating a blockchain solution to drive innovation and disrupt traditional business models. This is occurring in virtually every industry and in most jurisdictions globally.
You can further gauge this from the fact that a recent study conducted by a market research firm revealed that the global cryptocurrency market was worth $1.3 billion in the year 2021 and is expected to become a $2.8 billion market by the end of 2028.
Read: Cryptocurrency: A serious threat; Blockchain: A revolution underway (July 6, 2021)
And this is just cryptocurrencies. The overall global blockchain market, on the other hand, is currently valued at over $10 billion and is expected to grow at a staggering compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 85.9% in the coming decade.
A growing number of merchants accepting cryptocurrency and the rising interest in blockchain among financial institutions are some of the main factors behind this surge.
And with cryptocurrencies getting legalized in some countries like Ukraine and El Salvador, more and more businesses and investors have started placing their bets on blockchain-driven solutions.
Furthermore, these advances are slowly giving rise to competition and are forcing market players to improve their services in order to remain competitive.
Research and innovation have become the key metrics for growth, and these are also giving rise to new and exciting possibilities.
READ: Lure of Bitcoins: Greed blinds even the wise to risks (February 24, 2021)
A great example of this is DeFi, or Decentralized Finance, which is emerging as one of the most popular financial technologies based on blockchain because it reduces the control banks have on financial services and money.
Through the use of tokens and smart contracts, it can completely eliminate the need for any third party in financial transactions. This is beneficial for consumers as they don’t have to pay any service fees to banks or other financial companies, plus it allows them to hold their money in a secure digital wallet (fully controlled by the consumer) instead of storing it with a bank.
In coming times, when blockchain becomes more widespread, its use cases will also increase. A few possibilities that have already started to take shape include using smart contracts to ensure that content creators are paid properly for their work, no matter how many times it is resold or reused.
Even brands and advertising companies are now making use of blockchain solutions to distinguish between bots and real humans, allowing them to achieve greater results from their marketing campaigns.
Read: The Future of Blockchain Technology in 2022 (January 7, 2022)
To sum it all up, blockchain will become as important to the next generation of internet applications as the public cloud, microservice architectures, and DevOps are to the current one.
Therefore, moving forward, businesses and users across the globe will have to consider the influence of blockchain in order to be future-ready.
(Nikhil Goyal is the founder, Beyond Imagination Technologies. He has worked on several important projects including manufacturing projects in Bhutan before starting his blockchain venture)