Bitfury Vice President: Bitcoin blockchain will be the center of financial reform in 2017

George Kikvadze, vice president of Bitcoin mining and blockchain technology company Bitfury, recently analyzed and predicted the development of the Bitcoin industry, community, and Bitcoin network in 2017.

High activity in the Bitcoin industry

With the official launch of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from companies such as Gemini and SolidX, 2017 will be the most active year for the Bitcoin industry. The Winklevoss brothers' Bitcoin ETF, called the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, is expected to be approved and launched in the near future and will soon enter the deployment phase. The launch of the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust is mainly due to the large financial services company State Street.

In the past, several analysts and experts have stressed that the price of Bitcoin is likely to double due to the launch of ETFs such as the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, as some high-profile, regulated companies, investors, traders, and consortiums can invest directly in Bitcoin through ETFs without having to worry about any potential legal issues.

David Zeiler of Money Morning Magazine said:

Most members of the Bitcoin community believe that the official launch of the Bitcoin ETF will have a positive impact on the price of the currency, because the Bitcoin ETF can provide a new investment channel while providing legal proof for this digital currency.

More importantly, Bitcoin startups have also gradually attracted the attention of some well-known technology investors, which is related to the decline of blockchain hype and the gradual reduction of blockchain startups. For example, the innovative Bitcoin startup Coins mainly provides efficient, stable and highly liquid Bitcoin trading frameworks for countries with large remittance volumes such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. About two months ago, the company received a $5 million Series A financing led by Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund.

Ganesh Rengaswamy, spokesperson for the Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund, said:

Coins is working with key ecosystem players to build a new financial and payment architecture for Southeast Asia.

Bitcoin Network and Protocol Improvements

On-chain scaling and privacy solutions such as Segwit, Lightning Network, and TumbleBit help developers and Bitcoin startups develop micro-transaction systems, efficient wallet systems, robust hardware wallets, and high-privacy Bitcoin platforms, all without the need for a hard fork.

Bitcoin Core launched Segregated Verification in the middle of this year. Research conducted by Alex Petrov showed that Segregated Verification can increase the capacity of the Bitcoin network by 1.1 times. Under this optimized block expansion plan, users can gain security while processing transactions quickly.

In addition, as more and more banks and financial institutions realize the problems of private chain networks or privatized ledgers, the Bitcoin blockchain will be pushed to the center of financial reform. Recently, the former CEO of Barclays Bank announced that he would join the board of directors of the Bitcoin wallet platform Blockchain.

The former CEO Antony Jenkins said:

Blockchain technology has the potential to change the way we use money, helping to improve the quality of the financial system and bringing lower costs, greater security, fairness and transparency.