2018 is planned as a crucial year for the entire Blockchain ecosystem and distributed recording technologies (DLT). Beyond the speculative furor that cryptocurrencies have caused, this year is expected to bring some maturity to the market. These are the seven forecasts of the three experts of BBVA facing the challenges of the new decentralized economy, which gathers the specialized media Criptonoticias.
Alicia Pertusa, responsible for BBVA’s Investment Banking Transformation
- The moment of productive solutions
According to Alicia Pertusa, 2018 will be the turning point to move from pilots and proofs of concept to the development of solutions and productive applications on blockchain and DLT technology in the financial sector and others.
The new versions of platforms such as Hyperledger, Corda or Ethereum, as well as others developed by ‘fintechs’ or banks, have corrected the errors detected during these years of experimentation and can start working on productive solutions.
At the same time, all the stakeholders, banks, fintechs and regulators have been able to gain experience and work on the aspects adjacent to technology such as governance, operations, guarantees, operating rules, among other aspects, which will enable work with this technology in the coming years.
Some examples of this can be ASX (Australia Stock Exchange, which will migrate its operations platform from ‘post trade’ to ‘blockchain’), We.trade (‘trade finance’ solution that will enter into production in mid-2018) or the application of Calypso Technologies for the crossing of currency operations based on DLT technology, whose commercialization is expected in 2018.
- Institutional investors
Within the most disruptive world of cryptocurrencies, in 2018, according to Pertusa, we will also see how institutional investors begin to enter and invest in this type of asset. So far Wall Street or investment banking have been behind the world ‘retail’.
Currently, investment in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ether or litecoinpredomina retail investment (approximately 90%, compared to 10% wholesale). However, next year the weight of institutional investment may increase thanks to the new investment vehicles referenced to bitcoin that are emerging, such as the bitcoin futures offered by the Chicago Options Market (CBOE) and the Mercantile Exchange. of Chicago (CME), the main US futures market infrastructures.
Javier Sebastián, responsible for digital regulation at BBVA Research
- Regulation for ICOs
In the world of ICOs, in 2018 the conjunction of regulatory initiatives by the authorities and the push of the industry in terms of standardization and definition of “best practices” will solve the current legal vacuum and turn the ICOs into an alternative mechanism of regulated financing for emerging companies, according to Javier Sebastián.
- Central banks
The expert in digital regulation of BBVA Research also believes that in 2018 we will see new announcements of cryptocurrency issuance by some central banks, as Venezuela has already done, including probably some country relevant from the economic-political point of view such as Russia, which will lead to an intensification in the efforts of analysis of this type of coins in other geographies.
Carlos Kuchkovsky, CTO New Digital Business of BBVA
- Scalability and new applications
For Carlos Kuchkovsky, during the next year we will see how several platforms try to position themselves in the ecosystem trying to solve the scalability problems of the current decentralized networks. These platforms will compete with current networks, such as Ethereum or Bitcoin, for taking over the growing community of developers and investors.
When the new decentralized protocols begin to operate in mass production mode, they will become the foundation for companies, startups and communities to generate new decentralized applications using one or several of these new protocols.
- Explosion of ICOs
Kuchkovsky also believes that this year will see the results of the explosion of investment in ICOs during 2017. Most of the projects will fail during the execution of their ‘white papers’ but the few that manage to put into production new decentralized protocols or Dapps ( decentralized applications) have many possibilities to capture the input of users with the potential to generate powerful network effects.
- New ‘tokens’
In 2018 the creation of new types of token, whether of utility and access or as financial rights, has been experienced, which has helped to unify the growth of the crypto, both financial and functional. And according to Kutchkovsky, during 2018 the rhythm of this financial and functional combination will accelerate and the pace will be put by the technology. Creating new types of ‘tokens’, and allowing them to join and interact with each other.
It is a fact that Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are the future of a new economy.
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