In 2017 the second largest cryptocurrency Ethereum exploded. Behind much of its growth was an interest in its ability to allow smart contracts. Smart contracts would allow money to become programmable, and allow certain supposedly unbreakable frameworks and rules to be applied.
Ethereum also allowed anyone to build on its system and create their own tokens (known as ERC20’s). This led to a frenzy of fundraising to establish new companies whose shares could be tokenised – these fundraisers were known as initial coin offerings (ICO’s).
In Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa efforts are underway to allow zero fee transactions - Wala raised 1.2m USD and is working with Prince Kudra Kalema – a member of the Ugandan royal family. Another project OmiseGo raised 25m USD and plans to scale to 1 million transactions per second (TPS), dwarfing Visa’s 56k TPS.
Decentraland raised 24m USD in 35 seconds to build a virtual reality world where users buy parcels of land – it is strikingly different to the already established Second Life (which generates hundreds of millions per year) where users have no ownership of their land and the servers are centralised.
Brendan Eich the inventor of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox founded Basic Attention Token (BAT). The ICO raised 35m USD and offers an open source ad exchange and associated web browser called Brave. Users are paid BAT tokens to interact with adverts. BAT is also used to reward content creators.
The last few years have seen incredible growth, and if you joined late December 2017, incredible losses. The bubble cycle of new technology has been witnessed many times previously, including with the net. The massive speculation on price overvalues the technologys current usage.
Despite the downturn in 2018, there have been many signs that's Bitcoin will stick around. From Bakkt; created by the owner of the New York Stock Exchange and partnered with Microsoft and Starbucks to offer Bitcoin futures trading, to the multiple Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) that up till now have been rejected, but are increasingly looking possible, and will clearly legitimize the space.
Will we see charities where money is programmed to only allow it to be spent on certain things, by clearly defined people, and only when certain parameters are met? Will we see citizens given the right to vote on policies and leadership in a manner that allows no potential for tampering or fraud?
The use of blockchain outside of money and remittance is virtually endless.
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