Blockchain predictions for 2017: Identity will become blockchain’s killer app

Identity could be the killer app that propels blockchain into mainstream adoption, according to a prediction at a blockchain conference in New York on Wednesday, where panelists took a close look at the future of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

From left to right: Meeta Yadav, Chief Data Officer of IBM Blockchain; Yorke Rhodes, Global Business Strategist of Microsoft Blockchain; Bobby Lee, CEO of BTCC and member of the Bitcoin Foundation board of directors; Joseph Lubin, founder of ConsenSys.

Joseph Lubin, founder of ConsenSys and a major backer of the Ethereum Foundation, compared the development of blockchain to the development of the World Wide Web (www), which took nearly a decade to become an indelible part of our daily lives. However, blockchain adoption will be much faster, perhaps in as little as five years.

According to Lubin, blockchain adoption is probably still in the initial flat part of the S-curve, and identity apps will help that curve rise and start growing exponentially.

A verifiable digital identity with a portable reputation system will empower more people to open bank accounts, apply for loans, obtain jobs, and participate in the global economy.

Lubin said:

“If you have access to the internet, you can build your own identity structure. This is a boon to the 2.4 billion people on the planet who don’t have an identity.”

But Bobby Lee, CEO of BTCC and member of the Bitcoin Foundation board, disagrees. He said that digital currency will be the next killer app. Just as the Internet of Things and virtual reality will become part of our daily lives in the next 20 years, so will digital currency.

Lee pointed out the difficulties we are currently facing in currency exchange,

“Bitcoin has fulfilled its promise as the first global currency. It is valuable in every country in the world.”

Lee also predicts that the price of Bitcoin will continue to rise.

“As long as the governments of the world, the central banks, continue to print more and more fiat money, and as long as we measure the price of Bitcoin in terms of ever-inflating fiat money — and there are only 21 million Bitcoins themselves at most — my logic tells me that the price of Bitcoin will continue to rise.”

The panelists also discussed other potential future uses of blockchain technology, such as tracking intellectual assets, ideas and allowing artists to attach their usage to content.

Blockchain could one day play an important role in keeping contract negotiators on track and preventing them from doing things like changing parts of a contract that have already been negotiated.

Yorke Rhodes, global business strategist for blockchain at Microsoft, said:

“You could imagine a new market for legal documents that are signed at the level of legal clauses. If you could actually start codifying those signatures at the point where you’re done with those clauses, then it would make it much harder for people to use those negotiation tactics.”

As Lubin elaborated, blockchains can also have a potentially weird side,

“Because of unstable and unreviewable code, some malicious people will do some disturbing things. There is a lot of positive activity on the World Wide Web, but there is also the dark web. I hope the same will be true for blockchain.”

But he also assured that if anything "unexpected" happened, we would likely see some type of social solution or consensus emerge to keep everything under control.