Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder, believes that crypto is about to undergo a dramatic evolution.
“The next wave as of crypto adoption is not going to be built on hype because the hype has basically already come,” Buterin recently said in an interview with alternative investment firm Smart Valor. “It has to come from really useful applications and things delivering value to people”
The Outlook for Crypto in 2019
Speaking against the backdrop of the recent crypto bear market, Buterin said that looking ahead to 2019, crypto is going to be begin deriving value form utility, noting that despite the slowdown, interest is still high and the space is expanding.
Buterin noted that the regulatory market is “friendly” to crypto and continues to grow ever more so, adding also that “The space definitely keeps growing and at this point, it’s looking like it’s just huge…people in all of the different universities get interested in the technology,” referencing the recent spike in classes offered by top universities across the United States.
There’s a reason this interest is exploding. A recent Qriously survey of nearly 700 college students conducted for Coinbase found that almost ten percent of them had already taken a blockchain course, and that more than a quarter of those students planned on taking a course about the technology.
That’s because it’s becoming clear that training in blockchain nearly guarantees future employment.
Blockchain is the Future of Industry
Campbell Harvey, a Professor of International Business at Duke University, says that students are beginning to recognize that blockchain is the future. “If you’re graduating from law school it’s a tough market these days,” said Harvey. “However, the law students that are trained in blockchain, they don’t need to apply anywhere. People are just asking them to join their firms.”
The use of blockchain is becoming ubiquitous across a variety of industries. It’s even showing up in places we don’t traditionally associate with high technology, like food safety, travel, and government. As the applications for blockchain widen grow, Buterin suggests, the value of the currencies associated with it have the potential to rise as well.
Unexplored Potential
Investopedia says of blockchain that “ the technology could far outpace cryptocurrencies themselves in terms of its overall impact, and that the real potential of blockchain is only just now being discovered.”
So far, the most common use of blockchain has been associated with cryptocurrency, and for that reason it’s likely that the investing world will encounter blockchain technology more often in the future, and find more applications for it. Indeed, as institutional investors like Bakkt make their way into the market, the value of blockchain and the crypto it supports will only become more apparent.
As blockchain begins to underpin alternative investments, gets mainstreamed by major corporate backers, and ties itself ever deeper into our retirement accounts, the usefulness – and the value – of the technology can only grow.
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