What do you predict the focus will be in 2018?

[lum_dog_millionaire]

As a freshman in college, I had the pleasure to take a 2-unit class on the fundamentals of blockchain and cryptocurrency. As Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and several other largely known cryptos exploded 1,000%+ we looked at the vulnerabilities of the different coins and the drawbacks that are not talked about between people that are getting into the crypto-investing sphere. Perhaps the largest drawback to blockchain is the issue of scalability. We have seen a wide variety of coins in 2017 with Ripple being partially centralized and partially decentralized and other coins taking similar suit.

Looking to the new year, what you you guys predict is going to be a big focus? Will it be focussing on smaller known currencies and investing in their future? Or putting our resources into the well-known cryptos to make them even better. Will the market shift more towards centralization? Or will it keep the founding principles of Satoshi of having a decentralized future? Or will we continue to see centralization in the form of exchanges like Coinbase which are susceptible to similar attacks such as Mt. Gox?

Unless education continues to spread, I unfortunately feel that true decentralization will never exist in our future. What do you guys see for 2018?

[1715110530]

1715110530

[1715110530]

1715110530

[1715110530]

1715110530

[Ryanpogi]

hopefully this 2018 will increase the coins for a lot more. That's really my look. thanks.

[sylance]

Privacy: As governments finally pick a side for the crypto battle, some will choose to fight and thus privacy based coins will be huge.  Established coins will grow in market cap but the smaller ones using new tech (ahem... DeepOnion) will explode in 2018.

Decentralized Exchanges: Poloniex has been purchased by Circle, which is backed by Goldman-Sachs.  This is the first move but I expect many of the big regulated exchanges to be picked up by the big banks.  This gives them crypto exposure without actually using it to change their banking practices.  I read that Coinbase charged nearly $1B in fees in 2017.  Big banks owning big exchanges will cause us to look for decentralized exchanges.

Cross Blockchain Interoperability: Projects like Aion, Icon, and Wanchain will enable data and value to transfer from one chain to another in a mass way, not in a transactional way.  A hospital patient blockchain will transact with an inventory blockchain, which will send value to a supplier blockchain, and then finally transact with a shipping blockchain.  And we'll get to see all this with a private key.

Machine Learning and AI: Bringing AI capabilities to the individual will be big this year.  Using a coin you'll be able to purchase machine learning to predict market moves, customer behavior, sporting events, or just about anything else with a pile of data.