Cryptocurrencies are a big talking point but there is considerable uncertainty and, as many warnings as there are, news of phenomenal profits to be made. Consider the partial forecast summary that Athena, our robot, has extracted from recent expert and pundit predictions. We recommend that you undertake a scenario planning exercise using her full forecast to determine your robust response.
What is changing?
- A lot of experts are predicting that ETH will be the first cryptocurrency since Bitcoin to break the $1000 barrier.
- North Korea could seek to use cybercrime and cryptocurrency.
- Facebook users’ machines could be taken over and used to mine cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin and Litcoin, security experts have warned.
- Bitcoin mining is so profitable in China that the cryptocurrency could fall by half and miners would still make money.
- Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, is not really money and Visa will not touch it.
- Developments like the NCX government backed bitcoin exchange will undoubtedly contribute positively to the worth of the world’s number one cryptocurrency.
- The SDR and G7 country currencies will be forced to alter their foreign reserve weightings and eventually include a basket of cryptocurrencies.
- Bank of America recently revealed through an annual report that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a threat to its business model.
- In JPMorgan Chase’s annual report, released Tuesday afternoon, the bank counted cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum as “risk factors” to its business for the first time.
- While Bitcoin is still the king of cryptocurrencies, 2018 will see the rise of a new breed of technologies that may help its competitors to dethrone it.
- Cryptocurrencies, like their predecessors, will be a key factor driving political destabilization.
- Insurers like Chubb are betting that cryptocurrencies will gain wider recognition even if the new business now represents only a tiny sliver of the global $720 billion per year commercial insurance business.
- The technological basis for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will facilitate the creation of more innovative financial solutions in 2018.
- The U.S. basketball team owned by Mark Cuban will begin accepting bitcoin and ether (and maybe other cryptocurrencies) as a method of payment for tickets in the next season.
- SEC has been vocal regarding the risks of cryptocurrencies.
- China is worried that cryptocurrencies could facilitate illegal fund flows and breed financial risks.
- Miners of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could require up to 140 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2018.
operation
- Lower power costs in some provinces could make Canada an attractive destination for bitcoin miners to run their power-hungry operations.
- Bitcoin mining operations alone are expected to use around 840 gigawatt hours of electricity this year to power both servers and cooling systems in data centres in Iceland.
- Bitcoin mining operations in China could shift their equipment overseas.
year
- Bitcoin cash and litecoin futures might be coming to Cboe as soon as this year.
- Bitcoin will see a huge crash over the next year.
- Bitcoin will be transactional in five years – meaning people will be able to use it to pay for goods and services.
- Bitcoin mining is projected to require as much energy as Italy by the end of the year.
- Cryptocurrency will hit $1 trillion this year with bitcoin surging to $50,000.
- Bitcoin mining operations alone are expected to use around 840 gigawatt hours of electricity this year to power both servers and cooling systems in data centres in Iceland.
- In ten years an incredible 10% of global GDP is predicted to be stored on blockchain platforms.
- There is a possibility that the mining difficulty will continue to rise until all the Bitcoins have been mined by the year 2140.
- The number of Bitcoin users in India will grow by approximately 56% per year for the next decade.
- Bitcoin’s computational security will be self-sustaining in 6.5 years after 2 more halving’s.
- Bitcoin will become so profitable in 2018 that it will have devastating impacts for years to come.
- The difference today is that companies like Microsoft, Google and IBM are making rapid breakthroughs that could make quantum computing viable in less than 10 years.
- Global central banks will likely begin to acquire large sums of bitcoin, Ether, and other major cryptocurrencies because the digital currency market has grown at an exponential rate over the past few years.
- Bitcoin could jump to US$300,000 in as little as seven years.
- The 21 million bitcoins will have been exhausted by the year 2140.
- Bitcoin is the salient of an economic move toward decentralization that could upend a few apple carts in the year ahead.
bitcoin mining
- Bitcoin mining is projected to require as much energy as Italy by the end of the year.
- Bitcoin mining will use more electricity by 2020 than the entire world uses today if current trends continue.
- Bitcoin mining is so profitable in China that the cryptocurrency could fall by half and miners would still make money.
- A ban on bitcoin mining in China will have a big impact on the supply of the coins.
risk
- South Korea has cracked down on cryptocurrency exchanges to reduce the risk of money laundering.
- Bitcoin is too small to pose a risk to the global economy.
- The European Banking Authority issued warnings to the public about the risks associated with virtual currencies.
- SEC has been vocal regarding the risks of cryptocurrencies.
- India’s finance ministry on Friday cautioned investors about the risks of trading in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
- Lloyds has decided that Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies represent a far bigger risk than gambling.
- Deutsche Bank said in a report on Dec. 7 that a bitcoin crash was one of the biggest risks to markets in 2018.
- India’s central bank has issued a number of warnings about Bitcoin risks.
- The counterparty risks of Bitcoin do not apply to Bitcoin futures in which all transactions are guaranteed by the exchanges listing them (Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Options Exchange).
cap
- With a market cap of almost $247.0 billion against a total cryptocurrency market cap of around $733.0 billion, it’s hard to imagine a world where Bitcoin crashes and all other cryptocurrencies escape unaffected
- The predicted market cap for bitcoin by the end of 2018 sits at $515.1 billion.
- The total market cap of ether will exceed that of bitcoin in 2018.
futures
- Chicago’s two major currency exchanges launched bitcoin futures: The other US exchange, Nasdaq, is going to do the same in 2018.
- The counterparty risks of Bitcoin do not apply to Bitcoin futures in which all transactions are guaranteed by the exchanges listing them (Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Options Exchange).
- Bitcoin cash and litecoin futures might be coming to Cboe as soon as this year.
bitcoin cash
- Bitcoin cash and litecoin futures might be coming to Cboe as soon as this year.
- Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, two Russian social networking sites, are soon going to be accepting Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash as payment from advertisers.
- Bitcoin Cash has a serious chance of eclipsing Bitcoin:
crash
- Bitcoin will see a huge crash over the next year.
- Deutsche Bank said in a report on Dec. 7 that a bitcoin crash was one of the biggest risks to markets in 2018.
- With a market cap of almost $247.0 billion against a total cryptocurrency market cap of around $733.0 billion, it’s hard to imagine a world where Bitcoin crashes and all other cryptocurrencies escape unaffected
currency
- Ripple’s big bet is that XRP will become a “bridge currency” that many financial institutions use to settle cross-border payments faster and more cheaply than they do now using global payment networks.
- The SDR and G7 country currencies will be forced to alter their foreign reserve weightings and eventually include a basket of cryptocurrencies.
- By 2023, the price of Bitcoin will decline sharply as it returns to its role as just another digital currency.
- A new virtual currency will apparently be backed by Venezuela’s oil, gas and diamond reserves.
- Bitcoin would assume the role of reserve currency because it will have proven to be stable for over a century.
- A top European Central Bank policymaker has joined calls for a global clampdown on virtual currencies such as bitcoin because of their threat to financial stability.
- The European Banking Authority issued warnings to the public about the risks associated with virtual currencies.
- Virtual currencies will continue to be a big story, and this will be the year when they start to move from the speculative wild west to a more accepted alternative investment class and form of payment.
Questions |
VISUALISATIONS
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System map
The system-map which replaces the old topic map in our newly released website shows the current limited use of cryptocurrencies.
Sentiment analysis
Depending on where you start on this graph cryptocurrencies are neutral or falling from a high in November 17 when their value sky-rocketed. And this graph does not show the increasing divergence between those who think cryptocurrencies are here to stay and those that think they will crash and burn or never be anything but a marginal trading currency.
Pie charts
Similarly, though there is lots of noise Athena thinks that cryptocurrency has only medium Intensity right now and that public acceptance will take three years to achieve, if at all. Cryptocurrencies are still seen as mostly early stage with some indications they are gaining traction and increasing interest from regulators.
Radar chart
This graphic shows the most likely and promising top areas of change caused by the acceptance of cryptocurrencies by 2026. These are likely to be the growing interaction of cryptocurrencies with blockchain, other technologies including linked cryptocurrency trading through smartphones, impacts on the banking and energy systems and the use of AI and the geneation of new data banks.
Graphit
The most visible impacts of Bitcoin in 2020 are likely to be seen with further investment in and its integration with other technologies, particularly smartphone payment mechanisms and Blockchain. We recommend you explore the topics in more detail at Shaping Tomorrow to mitigate threats to your organization and to seize upcoming opportunities.
- Emerging topic
Year-on-year
The chart below shows the rapid rise in crytocurriees in many sctors from a weak signal in 2016 to a growing trend in 2017. Financial services and Support Services led the way in 2016 and 2017. But many other sectors are ramping up their efforts to first understand and then determine their response.
Heatmap
North America, will likely be the leader in changing its ways of doing business using cryptocurrencies’. But Eastern countries from Russia, Australasia and some countries in Europe will also make rapid progress. You can follow these countries and the changes they are making, instantly at Shaping Tomorrow, and then take their best ideas to implement in your organization.
Sources
Athena used the sources below as the top ones to create this report and determined which embedded forecasts are included in this Trend Alert. She found 1,392 forecasts in seconds on the 14th March 2018 to allow us to publish this summary in less than thirty minutes. She can turn these into PowerPoint slides and Audio files in minutes too as you wish.
Athena
Athena does show duplicates to aid your understanding of themes as well as contradictory forecasts. She may also show near-duplicates. You can speed read past the duplicates and near-duplicates if you wish, though the latter may show additional information. You can use the contradictory, and likely uncertain forecasts she finds to imagine different scenarios. The future is unpredictable, but we can examine the possibilities and choose our preferable future from the choices she presents.
Athena is apolitical. She will report forecasts from different viewpoints however distasteful that might be to our own values. Wearing rose-colored glasses is not her purpose; reporting potential futures is. So, we recommend you check her veracity before responding to her extracted forecasts.
Just like humans, Athena can be fallible.
Do recognize that you and your associates are biased too. But whereas you tire, make mistakes and only recognize what interests you, she does not. She might miss or misinterpret as you do, but with far less frequency and she’ll take uncomfortable truths and alternative ideas in her stride. But, please let us know if you feel her bias can be reduced. We want to do our best for you. And, as with any research, you should check and triangulate her findings for yourself.
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