From the most optimistic (and least likely) to the most plausible scenario.
Cryptocurrencies are a very young market. The very first of them, Bitcoin (Bitcoin), was just nine years old in January. But let's fantasize a bit and imagine what the cryptocurrency future may be.
Here are five main scenarios.
1. The future of cryptomaximalism
Situation: Bitcoin is a global currency. They are paid for everywhere and everywhere, except for situations with the purchase of drugs in the darknet and tax evasion - Zcash is used there, which, of course, is prohibited, but these prohibitions are bypassed. All retail transactions go through Lightning hubs, which are constantly monitored and verified by artificial intelligence.
People cherish their personal keys, because by losing them, you can lose all your savings. The same keys encrypt their personal data that can be used by decentralized applications running on the “Ethereum Worldwide Computer”. This machine (thanks to the Plasma system) performs billions of operations per millisecond. And, again, the guard is artificial intelligence, which monitors signs of fraud.
Fiat currencies died from hyperinflation, banks died with them, national states breathe their last, - the new generation prefers any citizenship to its complete absence. The world is controlled mainly by Bitcoin-Systaider libertarians (Sistending is a movement that involves the creation of independent communities floating on the high seas outside of any state jurisdiction) and the Ethereum-hacker communes, which call themselves “Filas”, as in “Diamond Century "Neil Stevenson, - only now it will be the Age of Crypts."
Probability of such a scenarioA: Almost zero for many reasons. The overwhelming majority of people do not want to keep secret keys, and if they do not, the cryptocurrency is not much different from a bank account, and if it is different (for example, irrevocable transactions), it is not for the better. Credit and cryptocurrency are poorly compatible. Most people want their government to be strong, and a strong government wants to control its currency, which means that most people like Fiat. Because deflation is really bad. And so on.
2. The future of crypto Wall Street
Situation: Ordinary people do not use cryptocurrencies, but in the financial world everything is tied to them. All stocks and bonds are recorded in the Ethereum blockchain, and any holder of a special token confirming the identity and status of an investor can trade any stocks and bonds in any market of any country in the world almost in real time, without asking anyone for permission. Trading takes place mainly through fully decentralized exchanges, although in some markets centralized markets still hold positions. However, very few people trade on their own - most have trading assistants with artificial intelligence.
Bitcoin is a global settlement and reserve currency; Gold is no longer interested in anyone. You can pay with a dollar card, but the amount will be immediately transferred to Bitcoins, the required amount of Satoshi within the same transaction will be sent to the card issuer and the intermediary bank, after which the balance will be converted back and sent to the seller of the goods. Thanks to the Lightning system, the fee for this operation is so small, and the gain on volumes is so great that it is cheaper than other options. Ordinary people never learned what Lightning is, but payment channels between banks, both domestically and internationally, pass hundreds of millions of dollars a day through themselves.
Probability of such a scenario: Almost zero. Irrevocability of cryptocurrency transactions and the inconvenience of providing loans in cryptocurrency are sufficient reasons. We may be wrong. Nevertheless, here we see the application of at least some of the advantages of cryptocurrency - why support thousands and thousands of independent databases, if you can get by ... let's say, one.
3. Future Dapps (decentralized applications)
Situation: In finance, cryptocurrency is not particularly accustomed - it is just one of the asset classes and the countercultural phenomenon. But the tokenized protocols used by decentralized applications have conquered the Internet. Facebook, Twitter, and gradually, Google are being replaced by huge peer-to-peer networks in which calculations and data are coordinated and optimized in real time using tokens controlled by artificial intelligence. The rules of these systems are determined by frequent voting, also tokenized.
Personal data of users are packed into “containers” scattered on the Internet and protected by a private key, and they can be made partially accessible to one or another service, but to whom and when - it is you or your proxies who decide. When you give access to your personal data, you get a reward, which you can then spend on something. Each person has a portfolio with hundreds or thousands of different tokens, and artificial intelligence trades with them all the time, optimizing this portfolio for your lifestyle.
Similar tokenized structures are beginning to form in the offline - in the development of equipment, in the design of cities, in the activities of large-scale artistic groups. The economics of tokens increasingly regulate human behavior.
Probability of such a scenario: Not too high. Yes, the picture is inspiring in its own way, but most people need centralized solutions that give them the opportunity to complain somewhere. They want to be able to introduce the rules themselves and ensure their implementation without a vote on every sneeze in each network to which they are connected. (California residents with their referendums can imagine what it means to answer such questions every day.)
Distributed applications are inherently more complex, fragile and slow in development compared to their centralized counterparts. (Imagine that for any change in functionality you need to divide the blockchain, that is, do hard forks.) Decentralized user benefits are very small - in the case of Facebook this could be $ 10 per user per quarter, which does not pay for all the efforts with decentralization. Centralized solutions have a number of advantages: they benefit from economies of scale, specialized data centers are more efficient than personal computers, and databases are much faster than any blockchain. And no one wants to track a portfolio of hundreds of different types of tokens, even with the help of an intelligent assistant.
4. The future of the global cryptoyuga
Situation: North America and Europe still use dollars and euros, and Wall Street still runs its own systems, although cryptoactive assets are also traded there. Facebook is still the main social network of the golden billion. Cryptocurrencies exist somewhere in the background, it is a toy, at best an additional investment tool.
But in the south the situation is quite different: Venezuela and Zimbabwe were the first to replace their money with cryptocurrency - to protect against hyperinflation. (This is a real cryptocurrency, not this recent Venezuelan misunderstanding like Petro.) This turned out to be a natural step after mobile payment systems like M-Pesa or Orange Money. At first it was not easy, for example, a successful attack on the BGP protocol disabled most of the Ethiopian miners and allowed the 51% attack, making several hackers very rich with the Addis Ababa treasury, but after a few hard forks and the release of the 2.0 version, the situation stabilized.
The local stock and bond markets followed the blockchain. The same happened with the local Internet, where data transfer was much more expensive than in the USA. This, along with a relatively large potential reward for using distributed applications, has led to their flourishing. National cryptocurrencies are mainly used (which can be exchanged in real time on a large decentralized exchange with inter-currency payment channels using the Atomic algorithm), which have almost replaced local centralized Western financial services. Now that Zimbabweans are visiting London or New York, they are surprised at the backwardness of the financial sphere.
Probability of such a scenario: Oddly enough, it all sounds pretty plausible. Not very likely, but possible. Residents of New York, London, Toronto or Paris find it easier to use international credit cards: there are no commissions on them, but there are bonus miles and points, promotions and cashback, extended insurance and other bonuses. Now imagine that you are being offered to exchange this for "international cryptocurrency" and "Lightning channels". And the situation is completely different for the inhabitants of Africa. When you are considered suspicious and not given credit just because you live in a densely populated African country, when you have double-digit and sometimes even triple-digit inflation ... then the equation looks a little different.
5. The future of cryptoculture
Situation: Bitcoin, Ether, Tezos and EOS did not take over the world - people still use dollars, euros, reals and yuan. In the financial world, individual private blockchains have found use for themselves, but this is not the promised world revolution, but some areas where this technology has proved more effective.
However, this applies to 98% of the population of the planet. For the remaining 2%, everything is different. They are non-governmental libertarians, tech-savvy hackers, and idealists who believe that cryptocurrency can change the world for the better. They are ready to bother with private keys, finance payment channels, acquire tokens, install and pay for distributed applications and store their data in a distributed way, but their total is 2%, that is, 140 million people worldwide.
So, uncensored, independent, decentralized social networks use the entire 140 million people, but this is a lot, and this means that in centralized censorship systems it is not very effective, since there is always a decentralized alternative. A total of 140 million people use cryptocurrency in everyday life and for savings, but this is quite a lot to limit national currencies, because central banks understand that there is a viable alternative, and if centralized money becomes uncomfortable to use, people can switch to it. In total, 140 million people use open access systems, and it’s enough that if you were blocked in a centralized system for some reason, you had an alternative and you weren’t completely excluded from society.
In general, only 2% use cryptocurrencies, but they do a great service to the rest of 98%, keeping governments from censorship, and banks from showing excessive greed. The presence of a viable decentralized alternative turns out to be a factor that largely mitigates the disadvantages of centralized systems.
Probability of such a scenario: It is very likely that this will be the case.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.