Where is blockchain going in 2019?

The prophets have spoken: Where is blockchain going in 2019?

Blockchain technology remains a hot topic even now, ten years after it originally emerged, accompanying Bitcoin. However, while most people focused on cryptocurrencies, developers started noticing that the blockchain holds a much larger potential than crypto itself. This is where blockchain development started, and even now, researchers and developers have only started to unravel its potential use cases.

Top industry leaders are constantly asked for their predictions regarding the road that blockchain will take, and the recent example of this is an interactive online program called "Who is the prophet?" On this occasion, leading fintech media firm, ChainDD invited representatives of some of the best-known companies, asking them to shed some light on the possible development in 2019. Here is what they had to say.

What do prophets think?

The first prediction comes from LD Capital's founder, Lihua Yi, who believes that blockchain development will start seeing even more activity than last year. Yi believes that there will also be a sort of polarization, where professional funds will start growing and improving, while the bad ones will disappear. He predicts that the same will happen to crypto media outlets, with only around 20 of them surviving the natural purge.

Rui Guo, one of the co-founders of Ultrain, also believes that a bright future awaits blockchain in 2019. Guo claims that different market segments of the blockchain industry will merge together, with some of them becoming a traditional public chain, while others would be a commercial public chain. Guo seems certain that the public blockchain is the way to go, predicting that it will likely become a part of many top industries.

Some of them may even help with solving scalability or decentralization issues, all while remaining public. However, in terms of dApps, Guo believes that 2019 is still too early for 'killer dApps' to start appearing.

Sunny Lu of VeChain chose to look further into the future, giving away predictions for the next decade. He believes that both blockchain and its applications will reach mass adoption and that they will infiltrate every aspect of our everyday lives.

Chu Shuai of QTUM believes that 2019 is still too early for anything major to happen, such as mass adoption of blockchain technology. While he does expect that some breakthroughs will likely appear, commercialization of this tech will not happen before three to five years, according to him.

While he did point out that his statements should not be taken as investment advice, he still believes that 2019 will be calm and that the crypto market might start recovering from the damage seen in 2018. This recovery will be minor, with the crypto market cap potentially hitting $200 billion again, while BTC itself should end the year between $4,500 and $5,000. Meanwhile, scaling solutions such as the Lightning Network will likely start emerging this year.

Consensus Lab partner Zheng Ren has similar predictions for Bitcoin, stating that it will likely fluctuate between $3,000 and $6,000, while the majority of token funds will either transform or disappear. What remains will be professional investment institutions, according to Ren. Additionally, Ren expects that more countries will attempt to regulate the space, while the STOs will start picking up, although both will require time.

Finally, Ph.D. Supervisor at the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, Mei Luo, echoed Ren's thoughts regarding Bitcoin price. However, she believes that the academic research of the crypto space will see a lot more activity this year, with new courses emerging around the world, particularly in the US and some Asian countries.