Over the holiday season, CoinDesk published a wide range of feature articles from experts and stakeholders in and outside of the bitcoin and blockchain industry. Billed as our 2015 Review , the series encouraged guest writers – including experts on law and finance, academics, entrepreneurs and even readers – to discuss the year past and the year ahead.
Our contributors didn’t always agree, but they did come up with a number of intriguing predictions , each influenced by their unique positions and experiences in the field.
In this article, we’ve pared down that information to define seven key trends that could shape the story of the bitcoin and blockchain industry in the coming months: 1. Blockchain apps will be released
2016 is likely to see blockchain technology move beyond discussion and into the financial market, professional services firms say.
In exclusive pieces by PwC and Deloitte, both of the firms, which are actively working with financial partners to develop proofs-of-concept (POCs), believe their work will see a wider audience this year.
In a piece entitled Blockchain Will Become a Reality in 2016 , Deloitte’s Eric Piscini, Simon Lapscher and Andrew Garfrerick, wrote: "We expect to see existing use cases for blockchain technology come to life, completely new use cases emerge, and an increased number of joint product launches mostly from financial institutions and blockchain startups." Many of the standard financial services use cases (such as international payments, trade settlement, compliance, etc) will slowly be turned into fully fledged products in the next 12 months, they predicted.
"Whether it is through internal blockchain labs, direct partnership with blockchain tech companies or through collaborations with platforms such as Deloitte’s own Rubix, many of the main financial institutions are now past the thinking and ‘testing-the-waters’ stage, and into the product development stage," wrote Piscini, Lapscher and Garfrerick.
However, […]
