More And More Enterprises Are Starting To Leverage Bitcoin Technology
Bitcoin is the most popular digital asset in the world, consistently maintaining nearly 70% dominance over the entire cryptocurrency market cap.
In 2019, we saw another year of explosive Bitcoin price increases and further adoption worldwide. Overall though, this has been the year of the institutional Bitcoin. We saw the birth of multiple Bitcoin products from the institutional trading world, such as Bakkt’s physically delivered Bitcoin futures, Fidelity Digital Assets Bitcoin custody solution, and TD Ameritrade’s trading offerings.
It’s no wonder why. In the ever-growing digital asset space, Bitcoin has the best available trading options for both spot and derivatives, and it has the longest proven track record and, with that, the largest pool of data.
So where does Bitcoin go from here?
The next step on Bitcoin’s path to world domination is in the business world.
As companies look to develop their payment systems and networks, more and more are turning to blockchain technology as a solution. It offers faster and easier payments over secure networks, with processes built around smart contracts.
Until now, most business-based blockchain developments have been done on private and proprietary blockchain protocols, such as R3’s Corda and Hyperledger Fabric. This allows businesses to customise their blockchain from the ground up, so they can provide themselves with top-tier privacy, scalability, and transaction completion guarantees. The downside is that developing your own blockchain from the ground up can be very costly and consume a great deal of time and personnel.
When a proven network like Bitcoin already exists, is all that necessary? Most major businesses didn’t consider development on top of the Bitcoin blockchain a credible option until this year when Microsoft announced their new plans this past May. Their permissionless, Decentralised Identifier (DID) network, christened “ION”, is designed to run completely on the Bitcoin blockchain.
This bold new direction from one of the world’s technologies titans triggered a massive shift in the mindset of enterprise developers and is making the prospect of integrating Bitcoin into enterprise development more attractive by the day. Companies such as Bitfury have already made huge strides with enterprise-focused blockchain solutions such as their blockchain as a service (BaaS), which uses Bitcoin as a base layer.
So what exactly makes Bitcoin such a great option for enterprise-ready development platforms? The reasons are plentiful:
- Data integrity – Bitcoin is the most trusted and secure public blockchain. It’s secured by 97 quintillion hashes per second, a mind-boggling number. It’s also a top priority of Bitcoin’s developers, who have shown to be extremely cautious and restrictive about making any changes that could introduce new security issues and compromise the protocol. It’s also easy to analyse the data with several easy-to-use blockchain explorers and surveillance tools.
- Smart contracts – Back in 2010, opcodes were taken out of Bitcoin, which led to the prevention of smart contract implementation. Recent developments have changed all that, though, with projects like Blockstream’s Liquid and the new RSK framework, Schnorr signatures, and Taproot will make smart contracts–like executions possible via sidechains.
- Reduced costs – With the Lightning Network now existing as a Layer 2 protocol on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain, transactions and payments are cheaper and faster than ever without compromising security.
- Increased transparency – A native feature of the Bitcoin blockchain. The developers have avoided privacy features in other public protocols like MibmelWimble, STARKs, and ZK-snarks. This is positive, as these features can make transactions difficult to audit and verify, something businesses wouldn’t be happy about.
Development on top of the Bitcoin blockchain looks poised to accelerate in the coming year, helped by the critical first-mover advantage and the fact that Bitcoin’s developers aren’t being forced to solve growth issues like Ethereum and EOS are currently facing. Add to that the security concerns top executives have with the public nature of the blockchain can be solved in the Layer 2 areas. Finally, another blockchain concern, which is the interoperability of Bitcoin networks, can be solved using Keep’s BTC or an Interledger Protocol (ILP) bridge.
As we’ve seen, the Bitcoin protocol has many advantages over its competition, and that gap will only continue to increase as development speeds up.
What does this mean for the average investor?
As more and more businesses get involved in Bitcoin, it means more and more businesses will purchase Bitcoin. Which, of course, will naturally lead to further increases in price.
With so many indicators pointing to an incoming bull market in the next few months, now is the ideal time to buy. Not only are you getting in at a bargain-basement price with the potential for huge growth, but you’ll be protecting your assets as we head into a very uncertain and unpredictable 2020. Don’t miss out on this opportunity. Act now and reap the benefits.
