Blockchain technology now exists a little longer than a decade – exactly as long as Bitcoin’s network. The revolutionary public ledger has been making front-page news in tech-related circles and there is a good reason why. It completely removes the need for a middleman by creating decentralized solutions that remove the need for trust.
This is also why a lot of investors are choosing to buy bitcoin at price points that, for many, seem absurdly high. The first manifestation of blockchain technology as a financial service can easily be deemed a success.
But how do the next few years look like? With blockchain use cases constantly increasing, many industries are adopting the technology to improve their tracking and authentication systems. And this is why we wrote this article. Over the next few chapters, we analyze the evolution of blockchain technology over the past few years, its position at the current point in time, as well as its outlook for the next few years.
Looking back to the past decade
The traditional ledger system is outdated, and we can all understand this by looking at all the hassle we need to go through when making transactions with our bank or looking up important information linked with third parties. Then there is also the issue of trusted third parties, who are more than often proving to us that they should be in a position of decision making, as human error can often cause problems.
With Bitcoin’s arrival, many tech enthusiasts took the stance of a skeptic. After all, this wasn’t the first attempt at creating a solution to the inefficiencies of banks. A short while later, however, the interest started increasing, nearly parallel to the price of bitcoin.
And with this growth came a deeper look into the fundamentals of the project. Blockchain technology, also known as a transparent public ledger, was found to be useful for a wide range of industries, all of which would benefit in their own ways. To not delve deeper into the specifics, you can check this article to learn more about the mechanic of a blockchain.
Since the creation of Bitcoin, we saw blockchain technology being adopted for many other, smaller cryptocurrencies. The so-called “altcoins” are now ranking up in the thousands, all providing decentralized solutions for different industries and needs.
In recent times we also saw the traditional banking system dip its toes into the concept, and there are now even banks that look optimistically towards the growth of Bitcoin as an alternative form of payment.
A pivotal moment
By all accounts, we are currently cruising a period that has been unprecedented for the price of bitcoin. With new investors, important financial analysts, institutional investors, as well as governments jumping on the bandwagon, blockchain technology is finally getting the recognition it deserves. And with it come many creative entrepreneurs that are finding ways to decentralize other industries as well.
We are now seeing blockchain solutions being built for supply chain management, education, health care, logistics, and even the justice department, all while cryptocurrencies continue to boom in a bullish market trend.
That said, some governments seem to feel threatened by the loss of power that comes with this revolution. Countries like India and Nigeria have banned the trading of cryptocurrencies in a final resort to promote the importance of their local currencies that keep on depreciating.
The biggest adoption curve for retail and thus a change in the way our world operates will most likely occur in the next four years, as Bitcoin warms up its engines to go through another halving.
The next 4 years
Every four years, Bitcoin experiences a halving in its mining rewards, a concept implemented to the network by design in order to increase the scarcity of the cryptocurrency. With this halving comes a surge of retail interest, more adoption from institutions, and even more transparency to the fraudulent financial system that has been imposed upon us.
As decentralized services in the financial sector continue to innovate thanks to blockchain technology, we can expect every industry in the world to adopt a fully transparent and middleman-removed position, in which everyone can verify the information for themselves. While there are some concerns about the effects blockchain technology will have on personal privacy, we can say with confidence that there are many more benefits that are worth the risk.
The most important of these benefits is the complete collapse of the hierarchical structure linked with our institutions, all of which control the direction of our economy, and often do so in a wrongful manner, as was seen when Covid19 hit. Hence, we will once again become responsible for our own finances, as well as the way we interact with people on a peer-to-peer basis.
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