Since last summer I have picked up the job of reading many, many white papers every week and grew into the habit of checking https://coinmarketcap.com/# multiple times every day.

Toward the end of ’17, I decided to start a weekly series of what I have seen and thought over the week.

However, the 1st draft of this one has been in my Evernote so long since the industry have moved so fast (i.e., a whole lot of work coming in) that I fear my forecasts become real when I finally publish it.

So, here it is: my thoughts from January 1, 2018 till today, hopefully still fresh:

1. The whole industry market cap will reach $1 trillion by January 01, 2019: 1 trillion is actually not so big a figure: Alibaba is valued at hundred billion levels, Apple is trading close to $1 trillion in the end of ’17 (briefly pass $900 billion), while Tencent broke through $500 billion last year, yet the whole blockchain industry market cap is at $580 billion as of 1.21, 2018: still a long way to go and we can definitely see the whole market pass that $1 trillion benchmark this year.

2. Cryptocurrency will be more convenient for ordinary people use in life: there will be less occasions where we need fiat currency. More crypto payment options in real life, probably starting from unbanked regions, which we have already seen for many ’17 blockchain projects such as OmiseGO, TenX and Monaco Card. Some of them may fail badly, but some of them will last, and the ones left will make a big difference.

3. More stable coin coming out as a choice in this volatile market: we need more stable coins not because we cling to fiat currency, but because we need a way of value measurement with algorithm-backed assets. There is tether, but the development of Makerdao, basecoin, and many more will be exciting.

4. Web 3 is closer to real adoption day by day in 2018 with more projects emerging aiming to solve fundamental issues blockchain technology face today: with filecoin, Blockstack, cosmos, chainlink and many other amazing blockchain infrastructure projects launching their test/main net this year.

5. Something simple, stupid yet cute just like the cryptokitties may get crazily popular, again, to remind people blockchain is still at its early stages but with huge potential, like 1994 in internet.

6. Some big and unanticipated accident, like the crash of a big exchange, or a serious hack, may cause a crash of the market and we will see the sign of an over due bear market. There may be times when people are despair and doubting themselves. The bubble pops, it is the ones who survive and left matters.

7. More people see crypto assets as a legit financial investment choice: I have got this question so many times, even from my very conservative lawyer friends! It is much easier for millennials to accept the logic behind cryptocurrencies.

Above are my thoughts from January. As I read countless white papers and encounter many cool projects every week, I will also write down my picks of the week:

White paper of the week

Theta is the winner last week: https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/assets.thetatoken.org/Theta-white-paper-latest.pdf. It describes a clear use case for the token and design structure for the blockchain the team wants to build.

To be fair, the quality of white papers do fluctuate every week, so this is just my little fun side project for future reference.

Project of the week:

http://www.etheremon.com/#/: I see the potential of this project, and already got many friends hooked up with this game like me. The only downside right now is gas price you need to pay to play all features of this game which I hope will be fixed later.

My inspirations I feel grateful with (and read constantly): Linda Xie, Cryptoeconomics, @token economy, Fred Ehrsam, and many more that I failed to fully list at this point. I am grateful that I am in this industry, at this time, to be able to participate in the development of blockchain technology.