Broadening & Deepening
Over the last 48 hours we have learned that one of the planet’s largest and most advanced logistics firms — UPS — is embracing Blockchain technology. We have also seen the opening of the second futures market in Bitcoin as CME trading opened alongside the existing CBOE option. We are witness to the broadening and thickening of the Blockchain ecosystem. How we move goods, keep records, transfer funds, record ownership is changing. It is changing fast. 2017 saw Bitcoin and Blockchain generate an explosion of wealth & creativity- forging new markets and opportunities in the tens of billions.
Broadening
Rather famously, Deloitte forecast that 25% of businesses would use Blockchain technologies by 2025. That now sounds very reasonable. The actual process of on-boarding firms and industries is now underway. We see movement in the autos space, trucking and transport, financial services, inventory and logistics. The value propositions are dazzlingly complex; the same reasons keep coming up. Safety is king in a world of lost and stolen merchandise, records, paperwork, invoices and headline grabbing hacks. Building a common standard toward massive cost gain and transparency is nearly equal to security.
Deepening
Loud voices have been gathering and echoing about the use case limits on various cyrptos. Some raise great points. Many seem a little confused about the nearly infinite divisibility of a digital quantity. Deepening begins with the ability to enter, exit and understand a store of wealth. Of course more is required. These remain early days. Thus far the new currencies are key in the economy they are building and less useful in the older ecosystems they are challenging.
In a detour or on a different path might be the better question? The speculative demand for Cryptocurrencies came well before the use of Crypto as a general currency. Bitcoin has become the currency used to buy into, and sell out of, Altcoins. The role of Bitcoin as a currency is ramping very rapidly in this exponentially growing space. The role of currency seems to be growing rapidly and globally outside of the traditional use cases where we see traditional currencies working. This is neither shocking, nor does it tell us much about future growth.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin has deepened. This new and recent store of wealth has attracted futures markets, ETF and mutual fund interest, brokerages, wealth managers, hedge funds, and purchasers of over a thousand other coins of various types. That is the deepening of the market. Large and growing markets depend on participants to hold coin to store wealth, move wealth across borders, make purchases and as a measure of value.
This is the emerging, chaotic, borderless opportunity state where Bitcoin is the coin of the realm. Interestingly, much of the broadening and deepening have been confined to the massive new continent of opportunity opened up by Cryptocurrencies. Increasingly we will see Blockchain and cyrptos penetrate and change even more established areas.
This is the next act.
2018 will be the year this happens, big and fast. iCash is poised to make its mark.
http://icash.network
