Blockchain Industry Chugging Along, Despite Market and Outside Skepticism

In my last blog post, I discussed the massive amounts of press surrounding crypto and blockchain at its peak. As you all know, we’ve seen a significant decrease in the valuations of many cryptocurrencies, and as a result, mainstream culture has either become very skeptical of this new technology or abandoned it altogether. Bitcoin naysayers are championing their own judgements while people who invested in bitcoin when it was worth over $10,000 are understandably upset, as bitcoin reached the lowest price in over a year.

The growth in awareness of blockchain technology over the last two years has been astronomical. In a way, it mimicked growing pains of startups that expanded too quickly during the dot-com bubble, from obscurity to over-hyped popularity, high valuations, and then the bubble burst. In these circumstances, whether we are discussing a startup or an entire technology industry, the final stage is crucial: will it recover, or slowly burn out?

While a lot of news outlets covering the “cryptopocalypse” may have you envisioning a cold and dark future, there may be a rainbow at the end of this storm.

While the news cycle may not be as positive as it was in 2017, a lot of great companies are still pushing on and developing great use cases. This is only the beginning when it comes to regulations surrounding crypto and blockchain as well.

Mastercard recently announced the development of a new method of maintaining privacy in cryptocurrency transactions, so the point of origin and amount transacted remain confidential.

The Ethereum Foundation’s Devcon4 in Prague unveiled some exciting milestones in blockchain technology despite the slower market. During a speech, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin expressed optimism over Ethereum 2.0, a major improvement of the chain that comes after several years of trial and error.

PayPal just announced their own tokens, which will use blockchain technology to reward employees. These tokens can be earned through contributing ideas and partaking in certain innovative programs. These tokens can be redeemed for interesting opportunities, such as a martial arts lesson with CEO Dan Schulman, poker tournaments with a few vice presidents, or a trial run with CFO John Rainey.

Aspiring Blockchain developers, don’t be alarmed — LinkedIn’s 2018 Emerging Jobs report concludes that Blockchain Developer roles are the highest growing emerging jobs, with a 33x growth over the last year.

Blockchain has also been gaining attention in Europe. A declaration was formed by France, Italy, Spain, Malta, Cyprus, Portugal, and Spain, unofficially called the “Mediterranean seven,” to promote distributed ledger technology to governments.

While the market may be down, which results in much lower level of enthusiasm from the media and pop culture, let’s remember to celebrate all the exciting things happening in blockchain. We can’t wait to see what is next in this fast-changing industry!