Blockchain Market Poised for Huge Gains

A look at the price chart for bitcoin over just the last year shows a market that’s likely in a bubble. The value of a bitcoin has been climbing for most of 2017, up to better than $7,400 per at some points. The basic technology underlying bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies—the blockchain—has likewise drawn its share of attention and then some, and new reports from TechSci Research say that the blockchain will be big business going forward.

The global blockchain market, the study found, is expected to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of just over 43 percent for the period ranging from 2017 to 2022. In 2016, the global blockchain market represented $215 million, but by 2022, it’s expected to clear the $4.2 billion mark.

Credited for this mammoth growth spree are the combination of Fortune 500 companies—like Microsoft and IBM, among others—who are taking notice of blockchain and putting it to work as well as the overall growth of financial technology (fintech) in general, which in many cases puts the blockchain to work in some fashion. Throw in a growing number of market sectors able to put blockchain to work—healthcare, for starters, but also energy, retail, and plenty more—and the end result is a rocketsled to enormous gains.

Karan Chechi, TechSci Research research director, noted “Blockchain technology enables disintermediation & trustless exchange, enabling two parties to make an exchange without the oversight or intermediation of the third party, thereby strongly reducing, or rather, eliminating the counterparty risk. In addition, this technology empowers the users as they are in absolute control of all their information and transactions.”

Basically, hang on to your collective hat. Blockchain is likely to be a big deal going forward; there are too many firms involved pursuing market share and frantically innovating to distinguish themselves sufficiently to get hands on that market share for it not to be. With cryptocurrency prices going wild in some cases, and multiple market use cases involved, we’re talking about a market sector that pretty much has to see growth.

Only time will tell if TechSci Research is right on its projections, but knowing what we know so far, the projections aren’t out of line.