5 Bitcoin or Blockchain Companies to Watch in 2016

Editor's Note: The author, Jad Mubaslat, is the founder and CEO of the BitQuick.co platform and has been involved in Bitcoin since 2011. BitQuick.co is a P2P marketplace that allows individuals in the United States to buy and sell Bitcoin through cash deposits.

As we near the end of 2015, many are questioning the future of Bitcoin. There is no doubt that the next 12 months of 2016 will be crucial.

First, the open source community of this technology needs to resolve some outstanding issues, most notably the issue of Bitcoin block size expansion. At the same time, the industry must combat the influence of "private blockchains" trying to grab market share.

Ultimately, I am a firm believer in the future of Bitcoin, and while Bitcoin’s progress in 2015 may not have received the same media attention as it did in 2013, the industry has laid a solid foundation for the continued growth of the Bitcoin network.

With all the applications emerging, it’s hard to imagine Bitcoin simply disappearing. I truly believe it’s only a few years away for Bitcoin to cross the “chasm” and become a ubiquitous technology.

But the big question is: Which application will first bring Bitcoin wider acceptance?

With that in mind, here are five companies that I believe will have a sizable impact on the industry over the coming year.

Blockstream

Blockstream received a staggering $21 million in its angel round, and its all-star development team is accelerating the development of cryptocurrencies, open source digital assets, and smart contract technology.

The company not only launched a beta version of its flagship sidechain project in 2015, but also announced its first commercial product, Liquid, which aims to speed up the time it takes to transfer funds between Bitcoin exchanges.

Another project Blockstream is exploring is the Lightning Network, a protocol that would allow small bitcoin transactions to be taken off the blockchain, allowing them to happen faster and more economically while still maintaining the trustless nature of the current bitcoin network.

The Lightning Network has the ability to reduce the transaction burden on the Bitcoin blockchain, thereby eliminating the impact of these transactions on the required block size.

There are technical challenges before this network can be used, and it would require significant changes to Bitcoin Core. I believe most of these issues can be resolved, and Blockstream, or possibly another group, will launch their Lightning Network in 2016.

This would greatly ease the current block size debate and add robustness to the Bitcoin network.

tØ

tØ is a blockchain trading platform created by online retail giant Overstock and first announced in August of this year. As part of the company’s larger project Medici, tØ aims to revolutionize the securities industry by enabling trading and settlement to occur at the same time through blockchain technology.

It’s worth noting that while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved Overstock’s issuance of shares through blockchain technology, in a recent Motherboard report, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne said that tØ may not use the Bitcoin blockchain.

“Maybe we’re not going to use the bitcoin blockchain… maybe there’s another blockchain that we want to integrate with that has a higher transaction throughput,” he told Motherboard.

This comment is aimed at the scalability problem of Bitcoin. The number of transactions that can be carried out on the Bitcoin blockchain is still limited, which will also limit transactions on the tØ platform.

But I believe that the block size issue will be resolved in some way by mid-2016, and I also believe that tØ will use the Bitcoin blockchain rather than a private blockchain because of Bitcoin's decentralized, secure, and relatively trustless nature.

If it comes to fruition, this would be the first major securities settlement product to utilize Bitcoin, and it would be a major milestone in Bitcoin’s history.

OpenBazaar

OpenBazaar is one of the most notable consumer Bitcoin applications currently in development, and it is developing a decentralized marketplace.

If successful, OpenBazaar would become an open-source competitor to eBay that could reduce fees for all parties due to its decentralized nature.

The problems OpenBazaar faces, I think, are more trivial challenges during its launch, including the development of a reputation system and the classic chicken and egg problem of how to gain transaction volume in new markets.

Of course, OpenBazaar has also received $1 million in venture funding, and I believe that during 2016 we will see OpenBazaar's highly anticipated launch and expansion.

Zapchain

Zapchain is a social media platform powered by Bitcoin and one of my personal favorite companies.

The startup is integrating on-chain Bitcoin micro-rewards, a truly revolutionary idea that can encourage users to participate in high-quality content creation.

Zapchain’s biggest hurdle is whether it has the ability to continue to grow and how to avoid spam users.

From what I’ve seen so far, Zapchain’s ability to curb spam has proven to be effective, and the platform is more popular than ever.

In 2016, I predicted that Zapchain would continue to grow in the non-Bitcoin community and become recognized as a top Bitcoin news platform.

BitFury

The bitcoin mining company, which has raised more than $60 million in venture capital to date, announced on December 16 that it will release a new ASIC chip in the first quarter of 2016.

The new data center that is about to be deployed in Georgia may double the total computing power of the Bitcoin network. Some people may worry that the degree of decentralization of the Bitcoin network will be reduced (Translator's note: The credibility is not high. BitFury likes to brag. To be honest, its computing power cannot compare with that of Bitmain in China).

I believe that this risk may be exaggerated, but we cannot deny that BitFury’s innovation will enhance the security of the Bitcoin network.

Furthermore, affecting the decentralization of Bitcoin is not in the best interest of Bitcoin mining companies like BitFury.

BitFury CEO Valery Vavilov thinks so, too, demonstrating his company’s intention to act in the overall interest of the network.

Original article: http://www.coindesk.com/5-bitcoin-blockchain-startups-watch-2016/
By Jad Mubaslat
Compiled by: Satuoxi
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/5-bitcoin-blockchain-startups)