World Economic Forum: Blockchain’s mainstream adoption is inevitable, will Bitcoin follow?

A new report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that blockchain, the underlying technology introduced by Bitcoin, will take a central place in the global financial system.

Blockchain has received arguably the biggest endorsement of the technology since its inception. Giancarlo Bruno, head of financial services at the World Economic Forum, said in a statement accompanying the report’s release:

“Instead of remaining on the fringes of the financial industry, blockchain will become the core of the industry.”

The unique characteristics of blockchain make it impossible to ignore it. Instead, this technology presents a platform on which other concepts and technologies can be built, especially the global financial system. CoinTelegraph spoke with experts about blockchain and its implementation and impact in the financial industry.

No need to push everything and rebuild

Simon Dixon, CEO of BankToTheFuture, spoke about the development of blockchain and expressed the importance of supporting it, but also pointed out some of the existing shortcomings of this technology.

Dixon said:

“The technology behind Bitcoin is open source and there are over 1,000 blockchains out there today. None of them scale or are secure because the technology behind Bitcoin is worth far less than the world’s largest distributed supercomputer that secures Bitcoin and the network effect of miners.”

Dixon went on to explain that while the technology can be replicated by anyone given access to open source code, few people will be able to create something as secure as Bitcoin because it is much simpler to build on top of Bitcoin.

“If the Internet is already used by everyone, why do we need to rebuild it? Maybe your functions are better, but letting everyone use it is the real value of the Internet, just like the real value of Bitcoin lies in the computing power behind it.”

Bitcoin is already a global phenomenon

In his own analysis, Cashaa co-founder and CEO Kumar Gaurav identified the unique characteristics of Bitcoin and its related technologies.

Gaurav also said that he believes it is only a matter of time before Bitcoin and blockchain break through and become mainstream.

Gaurav says:

“Bitcoin is a completely new product with many features that other products do not have. Bitcoin is low-cost, instant, and does not require a physical object to transfer value across borders. Obviously, these features raise many questions and challenges for government authorities. Can we seriously think that such a high-quality product can be banned by all public sectors in the world? In fact, it is impossible.”

Gaurav predicts that Bitcoin’s success will continue to expand and become more prominent in people’s lives, which will cause regulators to become more aggressive, as this has already happened in the sharing economy: Uber and Airbnb are also in a similar regulatory limbo.

He went on to say that it is an unanswerable question as to how Bitcoin will be regulated, but noted that Bitcoin is already a global phenomenon and that the impact of any heavy-handed regulation would only make Bitcoin use more obscure, which is not in the best interest of the government.

Therefore, there should be an appropriate balance in regulation.

Permanent and trustless value transfer

Christopher Franko, president of Borderless Charity and founder of Borderless.tech, said he fully agrees that blockchain is going mainstream.

Franko said:

“Santander reports that banks could save around $20 billion by 2020 using blockchain, though whether or not those savings will be passed on to customers remains to be seen. Either way, the savings would provide an incredible monetary incentive for the big banks to adopt some type of blockchain technology. By doing so, they validate the whole idea.”

Franko identified certain benefits of blockchain technology for global finance, including the immutable and trustless transfer of value, which he said is the main reason for using blockchain instead of traditional database architecture.

He said:

“Add to that the fault tolerance aspect, and blockchain is a no-brainer for large companies that need 100% accurate, auditable data available at all times. As I’ve said in previous interviews, the irony is that large banks don’t really trust each other, which makes interbank collaboration cumbersome and expensive to accomplish.”

As honest as mathematics

Franko concluded by saying that blockchain can serve as a cost-effective and honest arbitrator, ensuring that each party can be certain to a certain extent that the other party is honest without reservation. This is not because they are good people, because even good people may do something dishonest, but because mathematically, the honesty of blockchain has no choice.

This is an extremely powerful force, and exactly what our civilization needs in order to achieve the next stage of human development.