13 Experts Weigh In On The Future of Blockchain Technologies

Let’s be honest: predicting the future is extremely challenging. Even more so when the future involves some revolutionary new technology such as blockchain. In an effort to understand potential future scenarios, we asked 13 blockchain experts for their predictions. Each of these experts work in the blockchain industry however they each have different specialties which were reflected in their answers. The two questions we asked were: ● How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? ● How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? Without further ado, let’s get to the predictions! #1 Tokenized Economy & Sustainability: Stephen DeMeulenaere, Asia Region Leader of Qoin Foundation With over 25 years of experience with the digitalization of businesses, Stephen spent the last 8 years on designing and implementing cryptographically secured Smart City Currencies as Asia Region Leader at Qoin Foundation. He has been involved in a long list of blockchain-related projects. To mention some, he was an advisor to Ripple in their early beginnings, became Certified Digital Currency Professional with the Digital Currency Council, paid reviewer of “Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies” for the Princeton University Press, and organizer of the first and largest Blockchain technology event at the United Nations in Geneva. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? I’m very involved in social impact and environmental issues. So I think that we can do a lot to incentivize people’s behavior in ways that will enhance that. We need to get rid of the way that we normally issue fiat money into an economy (loans with debt attached to it). Instead, we need to issue currencies in completely different ways. That would have such a huge impact on our environment. And given the seriousness of climate change, I think that we need to start looking at that matter really quickly. Very urgently. So the blockchain technologies have come at the right time for us to really start to address that properly. Now we have the tools we just need everyone to learn about them really quickly. Thankfully we have institutions like Blockchain Zoo to help with the education process. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? I think it is evolving the way it should. I don’t have any major issues with how things are rolling along. I think we’re going to see another big wave of people becoming involved with cryptocurrencies partly from speculative or for speculative reasons like they were last year when the price of bitcoin went up to 20 thousand dollars. But I think that we’re also going to see people who are much more interested in improving the way that things are running in their area around it. They will become more involved in these kinds of currencies. #2 : Matthew Vitamante, CEO of Blockchain in Cleantech California Global Innovation Exchange Matthew is a venture consultant and investor advisor with expertise in cleantech and startups. He is a CEO of California Global Innovation exchange, providing diverse and innovative investment structures and advising companies from the US and EU, that are transferring or xpanding into Asia. He has been working with venture capital in various forms for over 20 years. In his earlier career, Matthew held senior positions in banks and enjoyed teaching as a Professor of MBA Business Program in Paris. His current business activities are focused on marrying CleanTech and Blockchain technology. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? To be quite honest, I see it driving a bit of panic. Because the delta, the rate of change that’s happening within all industries due to the blockchain is wiping out existing businesses. And so I do not think that blockchain development, innovation, and education will be able to replace those jobs for people. Because if you’re talking about brick and mortar or maybe it’s not even brick and mortar, maybe it’s even Web 2.0 stuff or maybe it’s just a business that is going to cut 10% of their workforce now because they don’t need the lawyers now, they’ve got smart contacts. I do think that’s going to happen and it’s already happening in parallel with AI right now. The flip side of it is, we’ll figure it out, and something will emerge out of it — new types of universities for example. Going to school for four years now is kind of erroneous. There’s no need to be getting a degree anymore because there are no jobs out there. You’re a startup, either to be invested or acquired by a corporation. Or you’re a technology developer. I also think the governments will wake up and provide some sort of value added tax. This enables us to buy ourselves some time for employment to catch up because that’s the lagging indicator. Then I think it will serve its purpose and there will be new emerging technologies coming out of blockchain. The actual market itself is going to get faster. More and more accurate and spread like wildfire into all the businesses. But I’m relatively new in Blockchain and really been around it for a couple of years. So I’m not sure I can provide a real vision. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? But if you’re not part of the blockchain, then you will definitely be left behind. But there’s another piece to this. If the STO market doesn’t go as strong as I was hoping or what I’m predicting, a lot of these earlier stage companies will have a tough time getting funded because nobody is going to invest in their coin unless there is government regulation. So the real key to all of this right now is the STO market, having regulation and making sure that grown-ups are running the business. Not 18-year-old kids in their basement trying to program away. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just that you can’t accept other people’s money if you don’t have a compliant business. And you want to drag in the institutional money. You want to drag in the government money. You want to drag in the IBM oney. But you’re going to have to do it in a financial regulatory compliant way. #3 : Melissa Loh, Co-Founder of Blockchain Mass Adoption 1Unit Melissa is an entrepreneur, business and leadership coach, consultant and project manager. She believes that business can be one of the fastest vehicles for positive change in the world, hence her interest in blockchain technology projects and the active participation in cryptocurrency and blockchain communities. She bridges ideas, cultures, and resources between Asia and the US, as she operates in Singapore, lives in Bali, and regularly visits San Francisco and Los Angeles. She leads and supports startups and established organizations that aim for triple bottom line impact – people, planet, profits. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? Well, in some senses I feel like it already has. I saw it on the ground in my community where more and more people started coming to the meet-ups that we have had every week since 2014. We are having these conversations on a multitude of topics, not just finance and tech but sociology, psychology, philosophy, game theory, and economics. It was so amazing because how often do you get in a room of people from all walks of life and have those kinds of really rich conversations? Part of it was just the nature of the group itself and the fantastic facilitator. But it’s also that the field of cryptocurrency calls us actually to consider all these types of things, and to really understand it you need to learn about all these different fields. So for me, that’s a real impact. Even if it hasn’t been adopted as a general payment method for everybody, the change happens in mind and the mindset. How people view the world and how financial systems, technological systems and business models of profit sharing and media should be organized. So it calls you to question, and I think that will lend itself to birthing a new generation of people that have different types of thoughts that they’ll integrate into designing and creating new products to come. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? I think that the market will evolve to adjust to what users really want and what they can actually bear themselves to participate in. Right now there are many projects at the funding stage, so it’s about what investors are willing to put capital behind and what projects actually gain traction. I think that there’s a lot of corporate and enterprise level interests that are really pushing forward. So it’s almost a little bit of a race to who is going to be the one or a conglomerate of some to push user adoption. And what I mean by that is, is it centralized or decentralized, or is it some interesting hybrid, or is it going to be the big media giants who end up eating the little guys ecause they already have an existing massive user base? So I think it’s like who’s going to be faster to the table, who’s going to create real tangible, practical, innovative solutions. Who has enough money to do so and the resources to do so and what’s the appetite of the users themselves. #4 The Social Impact of Blockchain: Jean-Daniel Gauthier, Co-Founder of Blockchain Zoo Danny is one of the co-founders of Blockchain Zoo, advising on multiple projects and spearheading the development of Blockchain Zoo in the Jakarta area in Indonesia. Danny is a technology enthusiast and blockchain early adopter. With more than 15 years of experience in IT and managing the startups, he fathered the first legal music download website in Indonesia, one of the first crypto-crowdfunding whitepapers DeBuNe and became a co-founder of the award-winning startup Open Trade Docs. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? You will never have to input the same piece of information twice. If you’re somewhere lost in the mountain and you have a birth certificate, a marriage certificate or whatever certificate you need to apply for, you’ve given this information once. Then you can go to your nearest point of contact and never again have to go down to the city and all these offices and all the red tape providing the same information, again and again, going through the same processes, again and again. That is going to change your life as a person wherever you live. It’s going to make things fairer for people in a way that we are not even expecting yet. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? I think we’re going to see blockchains act as platforms. It is already starting, of course, with for instance Ethereum, with Dapps and MetaMask. I think this is the direction the technology could take. So blockchains as platforms, Dapps as apps with a single point of entry for all those apps, maybe even interoperable between these platforms. So one identity, many users. Later in many years, maybe even one currency. It would be fun or not depending on what your take is on it. But yes, you will have app stores for blockchains. #5 Centralized vs Decentralized Exchanges: ArturZaharov, Product Manager at Hodlhodl Artur has years of experience in the cryptocurrency world by joining different projects in various forms. From the very first time he entered the industry back in 2016, Artur has always been fascinated by the potential, the value, and the future of cryptocurrency. Currently, he is a Product Manager of the peer-to-peer exchange and a facilitator of meet-ups in all across the globe. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? There will be a change in the way people are sending their value. So people will understand that freedom is really crucial, that governments are trying to control every action you take and people will understand that there is a way to avoid this. So far not many people understand this issue that every action they make is controlled. I think the blockchain, bitcoin and this crypto space will bring more freedom to this world, and clarity about what actually happens here in this world. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? I think there will be more and more projects that we see right now. We’re at the start of the big, cool, interesting future and I think there will be more and more interesting projects that are resolving our issues in a better and more efficient way. I mean that’s the main thing that will happen —more projects and fewer and fewer issues in our lives. #6 Fundraising for Blockchain Companies: Sergej Stein, Co-Founder of DLT Capital Zergej is a young business owner. Financial education led him into the career connected to financial modeling, budgeting, projections and later funding, investing and ICOs for startups, small and medium enterprises. Two years ago, he became a co-founder of DLT Capital GmbH, a Management Consulting firm in Germany. Currently, his role is to maintain relationships with other regions like South East Asia and live out of suitcases due to extensive business traveling, holding meet-ups in different locations, and working with clientsonsight. Despite being busy with ongoing business endeavors, he has enrolled in a new Masters Degree in Digital Currencies at University of Nicosia, Cyprus. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? I hope that finance will be disintermediated, meaning that everyone controls their own money, everyone controls their own value. This is similar to what we have now with the Internet, with the decentralization of information which we control. So basically we control what we want to know, what we want to read and so on. The same should happen for finance, and hopefully, people will understand that and will use that and not just give away their own power to other central companies or authorities. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? We will see blockchain as a service solutions and more modular solutions. You can build blockchains without the need for programming yourself. You just have modules that you can put together and create your own private chain. Solutions like that make it easier to implement it which is pretty cool. #7 SMEs and Blockchain: Francis Hutley, Co-Founder of BlockSmart As the Co-Founder of BlockSmart, Francis is simplifying blockchain for small and medium enterprises. His background as a social scientist, part of global venture-builder, Rocket Internet, and a top venture-backed blockchain startup in Hong Kong made him as a brilliant solution architect. Last but not least, he holds a Masters degree in Entrepreneurship from Cass Business School in London and runs the Eton College Blockchain Association. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? I think the big amazing innovations that will come from blockchain are very much like the Internet. They’re impossible to predict now. We didn’t know social networking was going to be the big use case for the Internet. In the immediate term, I see the developing world as a major untapped pool of human capital that can be brought into the system where crypto does it better than the traditional world is. It is easier to build banking infrastructure for 3 billion people just giving everyone a private key. When there are no immediate valuable financial services, there’s nothing to replace, so there are no switching costs. Therefore providing a little bit of value with good crypto products and you have a good chance of on-ramping a lot of people rapidly. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? In terms of blockchain-specific solutions and blockchain as a service, I think that is a relatively slow-moving business. Again, there are going to be isolated use cases which crop up everywhere whether it’s peer-to-peer lending or ICOs, things like that which are going to provide a lot of value. So that’s the kind of thing we pretty much keep our eye on. This year has been the year of stablecoins and decentralized finance. Decentralized finance is providing real value at the moment, and stablecoins mean that anyone from around the world can access the US dollar. There’s going to be some cool cases with that. I’m not sure exactly what yet but that’s what we’re keeping our eye on. #8 Reducing Plastic Pollution with Blockchain: Russel Maier, Founder of Global Ecobrick Alliance Aside from a Founder of Global Ecobrick Alliance, Russell is both a philosopher by education and change maker by profession. For over a decade, Russell has been working on projects which are changing the world for the better. Solar energy, waste management and now it’s time for Blockchain and using this technology for diminishing plastic usage. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? We see so many people interested in validating and working on ecobricks in our app right now. We created the system, but we didn’t quite know how it would happen whether people would engage with it or not. We’ve got a tremendous amount of folks in the UK now who are logging on, going through this list of ecobricks that we’ve got. Before we had a backlog of 30,000 ecobricks and now that backlog is only at a thousand. Those folks who are doing it are getting brikcoins as a reward for doing the work, but the brikcoins aren’t worth anything yet. So what we see is that there is a tremendous motivation among folks to solve, be part of the solution and to do something practical even without a financial reward. We can start to quantify that for them. I think it’s valuable to quantify it and that’s where blockchain comes in as a way to quantify values that we all know exist but haven’t been quantified before. When we give something of value, that’s when things change. I see blockchain as a way to transcend the concept of waste. To give value to the valueless, to give utility, to quantify the value of something that hasn’t been valued before. To give this value, not necessarily capital or financial, economic value as we have in the fiat currencies but to give it value nonetheless that we can quantify. And for me, that’s what blockchain is all about. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? I’m excited to see blockchain solutions become more grounded. I think there’s a lot of stuff that’s up in the air and that’s not so connected to the real world, to ecology, to people. Here in Indonesia, for example, lots of people are interested in blockchain. But Bali is just small fraction of Indonesia. When I work with folks and communities around Indonesia, no one’s using blockchain, no one’s using bitcoin, they haven’t even heard of it. #9 : Patricia Parkinson, Co-Founder of Decentralization of Internet BlockCollab With over a decade of experience in designing products and fostering innovative teams, Patricia is the biz wiz who has worked with 100+ startups to Fortune 500 clients. She is a visionary fueled by fascination and enthusiasm for a decentralized future. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? I think that for a long time the value that’s been created by people on the Internet has been captured by centralized entities. In the book “Who Owns the Future,” the author Jaron Lanier calls these intermediaries “Siren Servers.” The average person on the internet creates value however they never see any of them value. I think through decentralization of the web, we’re going to see different ways that that value is returned back to the user. Be it in some privacy, control of their data, or the way that they generate their revenue and income in the world. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? First we’re going to see the word blockchain being used a lot less, especially to promote a product. Blockchain will kind of underpin the solutions being possible. However, the everyday consumer doesn’t really need to know that. I also think that we’re going to see the cost of running applications decrease as more effective blockchain solutions replace traditional server environments. I’ve already seen this on EOS in the last couple of weeks. Lastly, I think we’re going to start seeing services pop up where users are paid to use the service and don’t have to pay to use the service. #10 : Martin Breuer, Regional Director for Asia at Building Community of Blockchain Early Adopters EOS Nation Even though Martin graduated from Düsseldorf Art Academy with a Master’s degree in Oil Painting, he has always been amazed by the development of digital technology. After studies, he moved to China and quickly stumbled upon Bitcoin. When EOSIO presented solutions to major issues like scalability, transaction cost, and energy efficiency, he felt the need to get more involved and joined the EOS Nation Ambassador program. Later he was hired as EOS Nation’s Regional Director of Asia where he currently leads a team that builds the EOS Nation Asian communities. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? Through the inclusion of the whole global society, this world becomes a fairer place. That’s the first thing, and coming from this, we will have a more diverse way of thinking about what the world is and where it should go. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? There will be some regulations coming. With the regulations in place, there will be institutions. Once institutions move into the market, there will be more stability. So I think the overall blockchain market will be more mature and less volatile. #11 : Roberto Capodieci, Founder & CEO at PoW as a Wrong Method to Secure Blockchain Blockchain Zoo Roberto discovered a passion for Information Technology at the tender age of 6 when, with the help of his father, he started to learn computer programming. By age 10 he had developed and sold his first video game. Four years later he began an entrepreneurship career when authorized by Italy’s court for minors, he opened his first IT company. In the formative years of the internet, he expanded his business reach into the online world and quickly found his company’ services in great demand. Roberto, specialized in Lawful Interception systems and big data analysis, is also a consultant to law enforcement agencies. Moved to Asia in 2004, Roberto was a member of the Nxt foundation, and now he’s a founder and CEO of the Blockchain Zoo Association, and creator of the Decentralised Business Network open platform. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? Blockchain is the next big revolution. It’s the starting point to a decentralized system. To get rid of central parties, to get rid of centralized control. This is a huge step in the future of information technology. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? As everything is moving towards decentralization, most of the application we use online today are moving toward a decentralized system. So blockchains and other decentralized technology will continue to be hot topics in IT. Things are going very well for Blockchain Zoo – it’s a great market to be in right now. #12 : Alexandre Kech, CEO of Custody Services for Digital Assets Onchain Custodian Alexandre has spent more than 20 years dealing with the capital market. He left the role of Head of Securities & FX Asia at SWIFT to stay on top of a changing reality of the financial world and work with custody services for digital assets. He believes that tokenization of economy and capital market through blockchain is the evolutionary stage for banking and financial services. His current focus is on launching a global Digital Asset Custody business in Singapore. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? I’m a strong believer in the tokenization of the economy and capital market as well because it’s a way to make assets more accessible. Currently, these assets are reserved for the privileged people. Let’s take the example of real estate. We’re hearing a lot about Zokenization of real estate in Singapore. This gives access to very quality assets to average investors like you and me. Currently, average people cannot really invest in those types of instruments or those types of assets. You can even imagine a future where all art is tokenization. I’m planning to invest in a Picasso painting. However, I won’t have it in my living room, obviously because it’s a bit too much, too expensive. I’ll be able to buy a tokenized portion of a painting that the museum issues. The museum might do this to gain liquidity from the asset in order to refurbish the roof for example. So those type of possibilities exist with blockchain and tokenization, and I want to be part of it. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? It will have to consolidate. Today there are many different blockchains, different protocols, different standards. It’s OK, this is normal in the beginning. Similar to the beginning of the internet in the 90s, we have tens of thousands of companies hoping to be the next Google or the next Facebook. That’s the stage we are at in the blockchain. You don’t have a clear winner on which blockchain will prevail or which company will prevail. That will be in five years probably. In the meantime, I think we need to work collaboratively together towards a more standardized and easier to use blockchain environment for the users. #13 : Maarten de Bortst, Research Consultant and Co-founder of Blockchain in Education Younder Maarten is currently writing a book about hands-on experience of tech experts in the blockchain. He spent the first five years of his career working in banking and financial industries and the next five years on advising companies on FinTech. One group of his clients in the EU are Educational institutions that would like to get more agile and adjust to exponentially growing changes in technologies. The book he is writing will be used as a handbook for students in the Netherlands. How do you envision blockchain technology changing the world? I would say if it fulfills all the promises, I see a really bright future with frictionless payments. Transactions is one of the foundations of our economic system and are set to increase almost exponentially with the Internet of Things. Many technologies are gonna be working closely together, computers working close together with humans, etc. Transactions are one of the most important things, and I think blockchain is a beautiful tool to realize that. However, we’re not there yet. So I think we should always address the pitfalls of our current blockchain solutions. Blockchains can be political, environmental, or technological. We have to keep that in mind. But I definitely see a bright future. How do you envision the market for blockchain based solution will evolve? First, we’re going to have global currencies. Second, we’re going to tokenize records that are already digital. And third, we’re e going to tokenize real-world assets. I think people won’t even notice that it’s running on a blockchain. Let’s be honest, blockchains are just used for bookkeeping. Nobody likes bookkeeping, so why do you even care? It just it works the way it does. So I think it’s just going to be an under-the-hood technology, but one that is really useful. Nobody will notice that some product or service is running on blockchain technology. Let’s Wrap Up We would love to hear your thoughts. How do you envision blockchain changing the world? And how do you see the market for blockchain based solution evolving? All these interviews are a part of the interview series produced by Blockchain Zoo. The interviews bring insights into experiences and thoughts of blockchain experts and technology professionals from all across the globe about blockchain projects, challenges, innovations and the future of blockchain within the blockchain jungle. BlockchainBeyond Hype