THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL MONEY

“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet”. – William Gibson

It has been a little more than a decade since the world was introduced to cryptocurrencies. During this time, the digital currency has made a strong statement in the financial sector. Cryptocurrencies have managed to gain the attention and admiration of a lot of users, even though the technology is a little complicated to follow.

Adopting cryptocurrency and blockchain technology has posed some serious obstacles. Recently a technology infrastructure company, Stripe, took a stab at incorporation the technology into their payment system by issuing bitcoin as a payment option. Regrettably, the outcome was not a success. Tom Carlo, the project manager, mentioned in a blog post that the users declined the cryptocurrency option because of lack of verification, high fees, a disconnect between transactions and the constant fluctuation of the digital market.

Many people believe that cryptocurrencies will change the way we operate, even though there were a lot of failures in the digital market. Kevin Murko, CEO of Coinbase, believes that this market is still in the developing stage and will have a bright future. Some of the other challenges we could face are regulatory restrictions, energy consumptions,cyber security, as well as the difficulty of converting cryptocurrency into spendable money.

So, you can see that cryptocurrencies have their pros and cons, but the following trends in the digital market can give us a prediction about how the market is going to be in the future.

Cryptocurrencies will receive more encouragement from institutional backgrounds.

Given the fact that many governments are putting their trust into cryptocurrencies, investors are encouraged to invest in the digital market. With added regulation, the investors can feel more comfortable and not have to worry about the constant change in the prices. In December 2017, bitcoin recorded its value at almost $20,000 per coin. Although the price reduced after this, it is predicted that the price will go high in the near future.

Successful investors like Tim Draper predict that the value of bitcoin might reach $250,000 in 2022.

Are cryptocurrencies regulated?

Security has been the topmost concern of every investor. This concern was even analysed in a survey conducted by Encrybit, an exchange where almost 40% of the people saw security as the main area of worry. Cyber-attackers have already taken advantage of the lack of regulation in the past and robbed investors. However, the efforts to regulate cryptocurrency have not stopped. For example at the G-20 Summit in Argentina, directives were made to regulate the currency globally.

Cryptocurrencies will continue to be volatile

There’s no doubt that measures are being taken to ensure the stability and balance of the digital market; however, it still doesn’t stop being volatile. The reasons for volatility include the currencies’s lack of elemental value, absence of institutional capital, establishment of regulations and other factors.

Conclusion

With the increase in the popularity of cryptocurrencies, we hope that the market will be the future of money. However there is no guarantee to this future, as the market is still young and developing, and a majority of population don’t know enough about cryptocurrencies.