Bank of America is betting big on the potential for blockchain technology and digital assets to disrupt most major industries over the next 30 years.
Global research from the bank indicates that, despite current regulatory pressures, significant growth will come to the crypto ecosystem beyond Bitcoin (BTC) as the industry evolves.
“Despite potential regulatory headwinds (maybe tailwinds ultimately), we are bullish on the long-term prospects for the digital asset ecosystem as it enters the mainstream.
We anticipate significant growth as digital asset use cases move beyond Bitcoin’s store of value thesis to an industry characterized by product innovation, regulatory clarity, increased institutional participation, and mainstream adoption.”
The bank contends crypto is still in the very early stages of mainstream adoption, a process that will take place over the next 30 years. The research highlights that more than 66 million people have adopted crypto since May 2020, raising the total number of global users to roughly 221 million in June 2021.
The report notes that blockchain technology will likely create new companies while simultaneously eliminating legacy firms that are unable to adapt to the technology.
“Due to technological advances in decentralized software that is native to the internet, a new medium – with distributed ledgers and blockchain at its core – is emerging rapidly. The applications built on this new software architecture appear to be growing more quickly than past technologies.
New companies are likely to emerge and poorly positioned companies will exit, creating significant upside potential for some and downside for others.”
The financial giant also stresses that the importance of blockchain technology cannot be ignored, and that new use cases will come and go as the technology finds its place in the market.
“It’s difficult to overstate how transformative blockchain technology, digital assets, and the thousands of decentralized apps that have yet to be created could potentially be.
We expect rapid changes to the current market structure – new use cases will be discovered and others will be discarded.”
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