Blockchain: Where Are We Now?
Author: John Souza
Bitcoin dominated conversations when it reached record highs in January of this year. From headlines, to family dinners, to business meetings, no sector or space was free from the subject of the currency’s rising value. Experts and laymen alike proffered their speculations about the longevity of the crypto craze, but every prediction conceded to the same underlying notion: it’s really about blockchain.
And that sentiment reverberated through c-suites and newsrooms. The technology that makes cryptocurrency possible is where the real potential lies. Companies announced their intentions to implement blockchain or to launch an initial coin offering, and entire sectors workshopped the applications of this technology of the future.
But has blockchain kept its many promises? Were analysts correct in labeling blockchain as the latest and greatest innovation in tech? With 2018 nearing its end, it’s time that we evaluated how much of the hype has become reality. Let’s see how the predictions held up:
1. Blockchain will leave behind its financial roots.
This one hardly ranks as a prediction. Even in 2017, we saw plenty of evidence that crypto and blockchain were transcending finance to revolutionize every industry. Changing how we learn, what we eat, the ways we communicate, how we make purchases, play games, view our health and wellness, and how we donate are all becoming feasible use cases for blockchain, many of which are already being implemented.
Disciplina is bringing blockchain to education through verified academic profiles while Origin Trail is utilizing the distributed ledger technology to ensure supply chain integrity. Rise-X has created a platform that’s ensuring equitable and responsible asset distribution to accommodate our growing population and dwindling resources for a more sustainable future. Before 2017 had ended, the VP of Messaging at Facebook joined the Coinbase board and CryptoKitties allowed players to exchange their Ethereum for adorable digital cats. Lympo is rewarding its users’ healthy lifestyle achievements while Alice is incentivizing transparent charity. Blockchain really is everywhere.
According to their recently released Blockchain Guidebook entitled Harnessing the Blockchain Revolution, leading tech association CompTIA noted that executives were well-aware of blockchain’s potential.
“74 percent of corporate executives around the world see a ‘compelling business case’ for blockchain technology,” the guidebook indicated. “34 percent of surveyed companies [are] already working on blockchain technology and 41 percent [are] expecting to develop blockchain applications within the next year.”
So saying that blockchain would go beyond the financial sector in 2018 was an understatement. This concept has only traveled farther from speculation and closer to undeniable reality since this year began, but that ship left the port long before we had to buy new calendars.
And new uses for blockchain are being unveiled every day. 2018 has already given us more than 600 initial coin offerings funding blockchain-enabled projects. With still a little less than half the year to go, the list of industries outside finance being disrupted by blockchain stands to grow exponentially.
2. Regulation is coming.
Often called a modern-day wild west, the blockchain industry has been criticized for its lack of uniform protections or parameters. A few bad apples and a number of unfortunate, illegitimate applications that teeter into deadly territory have plagued the otherwise hopeful image of blockchain growth. Accordingly, impending regulations that prevent and correct these deviations have been all but inevitable.
“My №1 focus on cryptocurrencies, whether that be digital currencies or bitcoin or other things, is that we want to make sure that they’re not used for illicit activities,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC after explaining his stance at the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos. “We encourage fintech and innovation, but we want to make sure all of our financial markets are safe”
Mnuchin isn’t the only one evaluating the safety of blockchain. The race toward policy adoption is as global as blockchain’s applications and this year has seen the onset of regulatory measures in a number of regions. With varying degrees of acceptance and skepticism, each newly established law challenges blockchain companies to comply with different restrictions and permissions depending on where their product is deployed.
The European Union, for example, set new privacy standards in May that include language regarding a Right to be Forgotten, which ensures users a right to their own data “entitles the data subject to have the data controller erase his/her personal data, cease further dissemination of the data, and potentially have third parties halt processing of the data.”
But the immutability of blockchain seems diametrically opposed to this notion.
Regarding that early 2018 prediction that regulation would soon wrangle the wild west of blockchain, we can see that was absolutely true. Only time will tell if we can expect to see more parameters set, or if uniformity is on the horizon, but blockchain certainly has some changes on the way.
3. Governments will start to adopt blockchain.
Blockchain had been lauded for its potential to improve efficiency and transparency, two things that are often lacking in political spheres. Perhaps it was optimism, but predictions were peppered with the idea that blockchain would make its way into government during 2018.
It turned out to be more than wishful thinking.
Regulation inherently brings government into the blockchain sphere, forcing officials to understand the ins-and-outs of decentralized ledger technology. But some countries are taking a more positive, proactive approach to blockchain adoption and finding ways to incorporate it into their infrastructure.
Companies in Spain and Catalonia are working to “establish semi-public infrastructures to drive the efficient adoption of blockchain technology in the public and private sectors within the region — and within Europe more broadly,” reported Bankless Times.
Singapore is embracing blockchain, too. In the summer of this year, CrimsonLogic launched a government-backed cross-border blockchain trade platform in Singapore and the country’s government invested in a blockchain-based healthcare analytics project via MediLOT Technologies.
Mauritius has been an economic success story through their ambitious alignment with advancements in finance and technology. At that cross-section is blockchain. In a conversation with Coin Desk, Atma Narasiah, head of technology, innovation and services at the Board of Investment Mauritius, mentioned the island’s intentions with disruptive tech. “Blockchain is an area where we will be focusing, building competencies and ensuring that it permeates other sectors of the economy and government,” said Narasiah.
Other nations like Australia, the United States, Dubai, and Japan are perking up at the thought of utilizing blockchain to unify government databases, subvert crimes like counterfeiting, and inspire economic growth.
Government use cases for blockchain are being uncovered with as much vigor as new business, leisure, and humanitarian cases, inspiring due confidence that more national administrations will be adopting the technology in the near future, perhaps even by the end of this year.
4. Failure is inevitable.
From the moment the bitcoin boom swept into the public eye, it has seemed that many were rooting for the early demise of cryptocurrency and all things blockchain. The guess was that the 2017 rise would result in a subsequent crash in 2018, the likes of which could not be reversed. There was just no way its popularity was sustainable.
It’s understandable how outsiders could label blockchain as a passing trend. As bitcoin levelled out, mainstream media coverage dried up. And, to an extent, the crypto-craze wasn’t even enough to carry certain initial coin offerings to their funding goals. Of the 209 ICOs in 2017, more than half of them didn’t even attract 50 percent of their target figure.
Clearly, not everyone has been a winner in the blockchain space and it would be naïve to assure victory to all current and future players. Blockchain itself, however, is not on course to crash and burn. As of July, Forbes is still urging readers to keep an eye on up-and-coming blockchain companies and ICOs are still bringing in upwards of 9 figures.
The prediction that blockchain will fail is a sweeping generalization that ignores the success stories in favor of the flops. Given the continued corporate interest in adopting blockchain, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see this innovative tech abandoned in 2018 or ever.
As long as crypto values rise and fall, blockchain will the subject of forward-facing discussions of technology, business, finance, and government. And for every ICO that launches, there will be mass of optimistic predictions — met with just as many skeptical short sales — about the true potential of distributed ledger technology.
But there is one prediction that has not wavered: Blockchain is the next great technological innovation of our time.
John Souza is founder and CEO of Kingsland University — School of Blockchain, the world’s first accredited blockchain training program. Souza is driving conversations around education policy for skill and capacity building in emerging economies at the World Economic Forum, OECD and at conferences and summits around the world. Find out more about Kingsland’s leading-edge education at KingslandUniversity.com
