Blockchain technology is definitely groundbreaking, a revolutionary innovation which could almost be used for everything, but at this point in time there is more hype than disruption. The vast majority of ICOs/startups are not leading the cryptocurrency disruptive charge, but capitalizing on it. The Blockchain ecosystem is getting primarily used as a medium of trading and investing. Even with Bitcoin it was about an alternative currency, disrupting the financial/banking sector, now it wouldn't be wrong to admit that it has somewhat become a speculative trading tool.
What do you think, would Blockchain’s first major use case would be as the stock market 2.0, cryptocurrency markets over traditional stock markets, cryptoassets over stocks?
Most new blockchain tokens fail to adequately justify their existence. We’ve seen blockchain shoehorned into almost every type of business — from online marketplaces, to dating websites, to discount cards. The blockchain ecosystem is beginning to sound like a particularly bad startup pitch competition.
• ‘We’re airbnb but with blockchain!’ — beetoken
• ‘We’re grocery delivery with our own cryptocurrency!’ — ufoodo
• ‘We take a perfectly legitimate business and mangle it until we can somehow justify having our own token!’ — aeron
Disrupting the stock market is an ambitious but not unheard of goal. But could the cryptocurrency market be one of these challengers? It is clear that for many people crypto trading fulfills the same niche as investing in stocks.
Institutions dedicated to the stock market have started dealing with the cryptocurrency markets as well.
Banking heavyweight Morgan Stanley estimated that 2 billion dollars were poured into crypto from hedge funds over the last year.
TraderView, a social community and tools for stock traders, has listed many major cryptocurrency pairs on its site.
Weiss index, a company which assigns letter grades to stocks, posted it’s first cryptocurrency rankings.
And Robinhood, an app that has brought stock trading to a new generation of investors, announced plans to start offering ethereum and bitcoin on its platform.
2017 also saw major companies launch their own cryptocurrencies. Kik, a Canadian chat giant launched a 97 million dollar ICO in August.
Overstock followed suit in December raising 100 million dollars for its OSTK token. Their token is a security and registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
Kodak, a household name in cameras and photography, announced it’s plans to hold an ICO.
The majority of new investors trade in cryptocurrency and nothing else. Stock markets around the world have begun to slide into obscurity.
Is this a moonshot speculation? Maybe. The stock market is a large and ancient institution. But disruption of the financial sector has long been a rallying cry of blockchain enthusiasts. Until recently we’ve been focussed on currency and banking. Maybe it’s time we look at stocks and investment?
https://hackernoon.com/blockchains-first-major-use-case-is-as-the-stock-market-2-0-8d916ea0bc00
