A.T. Kearney’s Year-Ahead Predictions Tackle Mobile Payments

‘Tis the season once again, and not just for holiday shopping. No, ’tis the season when people start talking about the future as if they had some way of telling what it would look like, and wheeling out a series of guesses, some more educated than others, about what the future might bring. A.T. Kearney Global Business Policy Council recently sent over its own projections, and revealed noteworthy points about their projected future of the mobile payments market by way of cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin.

It’s the second in a series of predictions from Kearney, suggesting that this might have been top-of-mind after all. That and the fact that bitcoin recently celebrated its 10th anniversary back in October, amid doubt about the overall future of this market.

Bitcoin once represented over 90 percent of the cryptocurrency market. A flood of altcoins in recent days, however, put paid to that number, ultimately diluting even bitcoin’s share to the point where it was a mere 33 percent of the market. However, even with all the altcoins in play, bitcoin has been progressively recovering to the point where, as of its 10th anniversary, it accounted for about half the total market capitalization.

Thus, Kearney points out, the cryptocurrency market will likely kick off the second decade of existence—it all really started with bitcoin, after all—in “…a state of post-crash consolidation and maturation.” Kearney calls for bitcoin to recover to two-thirds of market value as many common altcoins lose value and user interest altogether, and customers seek refuge in a known name brand, looking to satisfy a need for “growing risk aversion.”

This might be a more conservative response than we’ve heard recently. With bitcoin already hovering around 50 percent of the market, projecting it to go up another 16 percent besides isn’t exactly out of line. There are still so many altcoins out there that the idea of them losing that much ground is reasonable by any stretch. Sure, some altcoins will survive, maybe thrive; there’s always a silver for a gold, and Ripple is still attractively priced.

Only time will tell how well Kearney’s predictions come out, but given what we’ve seen this year and what we know so far, a slight bitcoin resurgence and a thinning of the altcoin herd isn’t out of line.