2021: 8 Blockchain & Digital Currency Predictions

As a difficult 2020 year comes to a close, interest in blockchain technology and digital currencies has grown with the rise of Bitcoin prices to new all-time highs. Here are my 8 predictions for trends in the industry for 2021.

1. Business use of blockchain applications will begin to really happen - at least in data-heavy industries.

After years of hype about blockchain technology and its vast potential, 2021 will be the year that potential is finally put into practice. Real utility will be driven by applications that leverage the advantages of a blockchain and its public ledger, both for the data and micropayment transaction capabilities offered by any massively scaled chain.

We will also see improved user interfaces and experiences to make blockchain and digital currencies easier to use and more accessible than they presently are in today’s largely hobbyist landscape. As a result, blockchain applications will see higher uptake, particularly in data-heavy industry verticals that stand to benefit from empowering data with monetisation and transparency – think healthcare, gaming, digital marketing, supply chain and Internet of Things to name a few.

2. The utility value of a blockchain and its tokens will become more important for determining its monetary value.

Watching the values of cryptocurrencies rise and fall is often an interesting exercise (especially as BTC prices hit all time highs in December 2020), as most market valuations are currently based on little more than speculation about the future value of a coin. For many blockchains and their respective tokens – including BTC - this is all there is to go on, because there is no genuine utility being developed for business and consumer use. Despite this, the market cap for many tokens has grown into the billions of dollars.

As cryptocurrencies become increasingly coveted by serious institutional investors, hedge funds and other sophisticated financial players, 2021 will be the year the real utility becomes a key factor in pricing analysis.

3. Better healthcare with better data.

Blockchain solutions in the healthcare space will bring about massive improvements in two primary ways in 2021.

Firstly, blockchain applications will for the first time facilitate patients owning, managing and even monetising their personal health data. Today's healthcare information systems are incredibly fragmented, with patient data from different sources – be they physicians, pharmacies, labs or otherwise – kept in different silos, eliminating the ability to generate a holistic view of patient information and restricting healthcare providers from producing the best health outcomes.

Healthcare organisations are growing increasingly aware of the ways in which blockchain technology can be used to eliminate data silos, enable real-time access to patient information, and return control to patients for the use of their personal data – all in a highly-secure digital environment. 2021 will be the year that patient data goes blockchain.

Secondly, blockchain solutions can ensure more honesty and transparency in the development of pharmaceutical products. Clinical research data is often subject to questions of integrity or ‘hygiene’ if data is not properly recorded, or worse, is deliberately fabricated. Blockchain technology enables easy, auditable tracking of datasets generated by clinical researchers, benefitting government agencies tasked with approving drugs, while producing better health outcomes for healthcare providers and patients. In 2021, I expect to see a rise in the use and uptake of applications that use public blockchain systems to incentivise greater honesty in clinical research.

4. Gaming, esports and experiential reality (XR) will see innovation with blockchain.

2021 will be the year that the metaverse – the long-discussed, but barely realised virtual world in which people can enjoy immersive digital experiences and easily transact in them – takes significant steps to becoming a reality, propelled by advancements in blockchain technology. This will have a significant impact on gaming. Blockchain technology will blend the physical world of smart cities with virtual experiences; facilitate the coupling of data with monetary value – enabling experiential reality (XR) and gaming interactions to be easily monetised with micropayments; improve transparency and fairness through the use of a public ledger; and create tokenised marketplaces for virtual items, establishing new digital economies where users can earn and spend within the metaverse.

5. User-generated content and digital marketing will see new business models driven by digital currency micropayments.

Digital content creators and influencers will finally learn to leverage blockchain-based applications to directly earn revenue from their content and avoid de-platforming risks in 2021. Incumbent social media and online content platforms – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter Instagram, TikTok – earn almost all of the revenue generated from user content, while wielding unilateral power to terminate user accounts, curtail or even cease earning, as well as moderate or disable content.

New social networks underpinned by blockchain technology are shifting that paradigm, enabling content creators to directly and instantly earn micropayments for each engagement with posted content, while unlocking interoperability and restoring the balance of power to the users. These new business models will threaten the traditional advertising and data-mining business models of legacy platforms.

6. Social good can be achieve with supply chain solutions on the blockchain.

In 2021, we will see greater penetration of blockchain technology as a means of addressing global supply chain issues in a manner that can produce positive social outcomes. By using a publicly verifiable data ledger, product traceability information can be coupled with real-time data about a product’s journey along the supply chain – be that from farm to consumer, factory to business, or otherwise. Blockchain-powered supply chain applications will help to prevent counterfeiting, improve the traceability of ecologically-conscious products, as well as increase trust in essential items like virus tests and vaccines, as part of a trend that will advance goals of product honesty, environmental sustainability and positive public health outcomes in the face of a global pandemic.

7. Internet of Things (IoT) devices will be managed on the blockchain.

The proliferation of Internet of Things devices exploded in 2020 – a trend expected to increase exponentially in the coming years, with the world growing to a staggering 84 billion IoT devices expected by 2024. That rise in devices came a demonstration of the different capabilities these technologies offer, including increasingly common implementations that used publicly monitored data in smart city and environmental applications.

Because of the substantial number of IoT endpoints globally, the volumes of data generated by IoT devices are not just big data – they are extreme-scale datasets. That data has tremendous value, especially if it can be easily accessed, analysed, used and monetised – all attributes which blockchain technology can deliver.

In 2021, we will see government entities, public utilities, transportation agencies, logistics companies, wireless carriers, even personal device manufactures, harnessing blockchain technology as a better way to store, access and monetise extreme scales of IoT data.

 8. Bitcoin SV (BSV) will begin its rise as the most powerful blockchain for enterprise data transactions.

Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision) is the only project that adheres to Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision to massively scale Bitcoin to become a global data ledger for enterprise, in addition to being an efficient peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Bitcoin SV is solving the scaling problems that plague other platforms such as Ethereum, and it has the advantages of a public ledger which permissioned systems such as Hyperledger do not. With tiny transaction fee amounts (the median fee is generally less than 1/100 of a U.S. cent), the Bitcoin SV blockchain can support microtransactions, tokens, smart contracts, supply chain management, content management, Internet of Things data, and numerous other data uses. Bitcoin SV supporters understand that the Bitcoin protocol enables the fusion of data (Bit) + money (coin), and are building diverse applications across many industry sectors that unleash many superpowers of monetized data.

That is why the organization I lead, Bitcoin Association, supports Bitcoin SV. For the past 2 years, we have been working on the technical capabilities for Bitcoin SV to massively scale and have been growing its global business ecosystem. With this solid foundation now in place, I predict 2021 will be the year we see the rise of significant business data transactions on Bitcoin SV as it takes the next step in its journey to be the most powerful enterprise blockchain.