It would exist fair to acknowledge that after 2020 and all it has put us through, making whatsoever predictions for the upcoming year is nearly probable to be a game of blindfold. Meanwhile, I am certain that humanity has much to learn from its past transgressions, and will move forward past correcting our mistakes and weaknesses. That's what we ever do. Undoubtedly, the major driver of our evolution this yr was the COVID-nineteen outbreak. The effects of the ongoing global pandemic on every aspect of our lives will form our futurity, and at that place are some tendencies nosotros started last yr that will most probable proceed in 2021.

COVID-19 has revealed the dire need for solutions in economic efficiency and transparency, and almost urgently inside the healthcare sector. Further deployments of blockchain solutions will strengthen healthcare systems, if not revolutionize them, by helping both medical practitioners and patients globally. Despite promises to preserve citizens' private data during the global pandemic in the proper noun of public health, the blockchain-based solutions storing COVID-19 data have raised serious concerns, as they don't seem to exist private at all. While the potential of such emerging technologies is promising, to residue privacy with the advisable solutions should exist a priority for those engaged in this manufacture.

Related: How has the COVID-19 pandemic afflicted the crypto space? Experts answer

Past driving our technological development into the future, the pandemic has also had a significant and ambitious impact on the fiscal sector. On i hand, governments all over the world accept made cracking strides in the development of central bank digital currencies this year. With CBDC implementations coming closer, serious privacy concerns accept been rightfully raised within the crypto community, every bit the applied science represents another pace toward a more centralized financial system.

Related: Did CBDCs affect the crypto infinite in 2020, and what's next in 2021? Experts reply

On the other paw, people have been seeking alternative — and decentralized — solutions, which led to the unprecedented rising of the decentralized finance sector witnessed this year. Both trends will certainly remain primal to the upcoming year.

Related: Was 2020 a 'DeFi year,' and what is expected from the sector in 2021? Experts reply

Amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, global governments began printing coin, generating new concerns almost the health of the financial sector and turning people toward alternative assets — cryptocurrencies. Every bit a outcome, Bitcoin (BTC) proved itself as a hedge against aggrandizement while its position as a store of value was strengthened, unlike in 2017.

Related: Did Bitcoin evidence itself to exist a reliable store of value in 2020? Experts respond

Serious institutional investors, hedge funds and other sophisticated financial players — such as Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, MicroStrategy, Square and PayPal, amidst others — entered the crypto space, and this tendency volition most likely remain in the upcoming year. With more mainstream investors and service providers joining the industry, the real utility of digital assets volition further drive cryptocurrency's mass adoption worldwide, which in plough will bulldoze crypto charity and philanthropy.

Related: Will PayPal's crypto integration bring crypto to the masses? Experts answer

With cheap and scalable, trustless systems, blockchain tech is improving supply chain efficiencies across many industries from blood donations to food enterprises, and in that location will most certainly exist more than DLT-backed use cases implemented across the globe. Some fifty-fifty contend that enterprise blockchain is the next step in economic architecture evolution, and that not taking this step alongside everyone else will be a grave mistake for big companies in 2021.

Related: Unforgettable: How blockchain will fundamentally change the human experience

Last but non least is blockchain's potential in our efforts to combat climate change and global warming. Blockchain technology stewarding the environment volition be crucial for the time to come, from sustainable digital finance and carbon emissions to eco-friendly crypto mining and transparent fuel use. As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, achieving the United nations' Sustainable Development Goals without blockchain seems an impossible undertaking.

Blockchain and crypto are non a panacea and won't solve all our problems, but their potential to improve the globe would exist unwise to ignore. Cointelegraph reached out to industry leaders and asked for their personal expectations for 2021 to gain some insight on the upcoming year in crypto and blockchain.

What will 2021 bring for the development of the crypto and blockchain space?

Brian Behlendorf, executive managing director at Hyperledger:

"I have no magic 8-ball when it comes to predictions in the cryptocurrency space, though I suspect volatility will continue to exist its defining feature. The use of blockchain, distributed ledger and smart contract tools will keep to grow as they have in 2020.

Tighter economical times that are likely to keep in 2021 hateful little room for proof-of-concept projects, but those conditions too often drive small and big enterprises towards greater cooperation rather than zero-sum marketshare battles — meaning more consortia efforts, more realistic expectations on returns from such efforts, and less hype and noise. We've already seen some networks, like Food Trust, reliably attain increasing value through network effects.

If your industry doesn't yet take a DLT transaction network at the center of its cadre business organization processes, it will past the cease of 2021. And where there's contest, those blockchain consortia whose governance is most open and networks easiest to join will accept the reward."

Brian Brooks, Acting Comptroller of the Currency of the United States Treasury'southward Office of the Comptroller of the Currency:

"Cryptocurrency is to banking what the internet was to libraries. Just every bit the internet existed for a decade before 1995, its rapid adoption became possible only after information technology became accessible to everyone, not only programmers.

In 2021, I expect to encounter the beginning of that same transition for cryptocurrency. I call up we are approaching disquisitional mass for much more ubiquitous credence of cryptocurrency as a tool for everyone to utilise, not only Silicon-Valley types. That acceptance is, of grade, not guaranteed. Crypto developers, exchange operators and others need to stay focused on addressing concerns about Anti-Money Laundering compliance, fraud detection and prevention, and a host of other things that must exist put to rest if the industry is to operate at calibration."

Charles Hoskinson, founder and CEO of IOHK:

"Blockchain is at a critical juncture. In club to fulfill the lofty promises of the technology and achieve widespread adoption, the industry needs to learn to work together. This isn't a new concept — in mainstream technology businesses rarely piece of work in silos. Nosotros wouldn't, for instance, wait a Samsung telephone to simply work with Samsung wireless routers, and we shouldn't expect this in crypto. If we go on taking the attitude that one platform needs to 'win,' then nosotros risk shooting ourselves in the human foot.

2021 will be a crucial exam of this. If companies tin prioritise finding ways to interoperate, recognising that the industry will benefit from a rich ecosystem of partners, all working seamlessly together for the stop user, and so in that location is nada stopping united states of america from having our 'bluetooth moment' and replacing the global operating systems with solutions that are ameliorate and fairer for all participants.

We could see blockchain adoption at an unprecedented scale in the developing world in 2021. For developing countries, the pace at which they can abound is frequently held back by a lack of foundational infrastructure. Withal, this could start to work in their favour. The agile capabilities of blockchain hateful that information technology could scale to cater for entire populations, without the need for existing infrastructure. After a bumper year for blockchain evolution, the technology is finally mature plenty to go them there.

This could not but let developing nations to grow at a much faster pace, but too means that they aren't encumbered with the challenges that developed countries face up with overhauling existing legacy systems."

Da Hongfei, founder of Neo, founder and CEO of Onchain:

"Moving forrad, I believe 2021 could be the yr that blockchain truly goes mainstream. Bitcoin already proved its value to mainstream investors in 2020 while DeFi projects affirmed blockchain's transformational power. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the diverse cracks in today's global system and the pressing need for more than blockchain-powered solutions to overcome current limitations.

Going into 2021, I do not see any of these aforementioned trends slowing down — if anything, they volition merely proceed to accelerate equally mainstream institutions increasingly cover blockchain technology."

Denelle Dixon, CEO and executive managing director of the Stellar Development Foundation:

"While 2020 was far from the year most of the states expected, I think it was an important year for blockchain and digital currencies. Information technology demonstrated the positive impact blockchain tin can have to evangelize payments faster and more efficiently. It set a stiff foundation for the year ahead.

In 2021, I believe nosotros'll come across more adoption of blockchain technology as we work to create consumer-friendly and connected products. For us at the Stellar Evolution Foundation, we're doing that by working to aggrandize our base of operations of anchors — organizations that issue fiat tokens and provide financial on-and-off ramps — to brand it so that blockchain technology is seen as useful, versatile and scalable. These anchors will improve support the most common utilise cases we meet for side by side year, B2B cross-border payments and C2C cantankerous-border remittances, and encourage boosted applications to come up to the market."

Elissa Shevinsky, former head of product at Brave, former editor of Lean Out:

"I think the well-funded players volition continue to execute and keep up crypto business. Bitcoin will go along to be newsworthy. I recollect nosotros'll run across more than corporate and less independent things, due to the way funding is being distributed right now.

I believe that 2021 will be an extension of 2020 in many means, as opposed to a year where we see a dramatic change. 2021 volition meet a lot of optimism, as people get the vaccine and life starts to feel more than 'normal.'

I'm seeing increasing distrust in governments and lack of trust in how countries are handling financial policies and bones functions. Did you lot know that the recent cyberattack (using SolarWinds, Microsoft, etc.) included a alienation into the U.Due south. Treasury? Would yous invest in the U.S. dollar? That's what yous are doing when you lot keep dollars in your savings business relationship. All of this makes me bullish on crypto."

Emin Gün Sirer, CEO of AvaLabs, professor at Cornell University, co-director of IC3:

"In 2021, DeFi will become a cross-concatenation ecosystem, with users finding and pursuing yield opportunities with the same avails across multiple chains via bridges. We'll also see many use cases launching for the starting time time, every bit developers explore networks capable of sub-second finality and much more than economic fees than what they currently work with.

Meaningful decentralization — as measured past the number of total nodes participating in consensus — and on-chain governance will move closer to the forefront, as users and newer entrants into crypto get more than aware of how centralized many blockchains are, and the take chances that introduces.

Finally, nosotros're going to run into institutions and enterprises begin to motility beyond merely ownership cryptocurrencies as an investment, to also building existent applications and infrastructure on platforms that can run into their performance requirements and be customized to their data and compliance mandates."

Heath Tarbert, Chairman and primary executive of the Usa Commodity Futures Trading Committee:

"Digitization of markets is a macro trend. Of grade, digital assets are office of that. Digital assets and their underlying applied science are pushing conventional boundaries. I am going to make a relatively rubber prediction, which is that this is going to go along to be a vibrant and active space.

Digital assets, and in particular the underlying blockchain technology, have great hope for our economy and for global markets overall.

Innovation in this infinite must continue to thrive. The financial services manufacture from my parents' generation — or even from when I was growing upwardly — is non what it is today. And I exercise not expect today's to be the aforementioned as for my grandkids. Markets must go along to evolve. We have seen immediate how these markets — and especially these technologies — exercise not accept geographic borders. It is important for regulators to develop coordinated principle-based approaches to this ever-irresolute industry."

Irene Gao, Antminer sales manager of the NCSA region at Bitmain:

"The current bull run is different from 2017. Unlike previous years, we're shifting from retail speculation to mainstream market integration. We've already seen increased interest from financial institutions and regulators alike, and this volition only continue in 2021.

Planned mining deployments delayed by the COVID-xix pandemic are likely to resume, particularly in the U.S. As such, next yr, we volition likely see greater diversity in Bitcoin mining as U.South. miners expand their operations. We have enhanced the efficiency of our Malaysia factory to cater to more of our overseas customers and have improved cooperation with our clients to further assist with the continuous expansion of their mining operations.

We are confident of moving towards 2021. We are improving our services to our clients. Recently, we extended the warranty of our Antminer 19 Series from six to 12 months and have begun cooperating with more than local partners from different regions to offer better support globally."

Jean-Marie Mognetti, CEO at CoinShares:

"During 2020, Bitcoin exhibited similar patterns to the ones seen in 2013 and 2017. The toll movements and trade volumes also demonstrate that trading, especially Bitcoin trading, has a type of kinetic energy. If this trend were to go on, information technology is possible that nosotros will come across Bitcoin post-obit a parabolic move in 2021.

Nosotros will likely come across a continued increase in the number of institutional investors and corporates adding Bitcoin and digital asset investment vehicles to their portfolios. This will effect in some Bitcoin investment vehicles, like CoinShares' ETP and Grayscale'south Bitcoin Trust, continuing to learn more Bitcoin than can be mined on a daily basis — a step that is likely to accelerate in the new year. I believe we are about to see a repeat of 2017 or 2013's trends in 2021, albeit in a much more than structured, less emotional style, unless a six sigma event occurs that interrupts the market'southward kinetic momentum."

Jimmy Song, instructor at Programming Blockchain:

"Huge bull marketplace and a lot more institutional investors. I don't think anything from the blockchain space volition have any bear upon whatsoever, much like the past 6 years. Crypto volition be largely for new investors who will larn that annihilation other than Bitcoin is really a scam."

Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum, founder of ConsenSys:

"I think that DeFi will become more than relevant to normal people and the tech used to interact with it volition be even more user friendly.

I'thousand also still predicting the parts of the Web 3.0 — decentralized storage, bandwidth and value — to be further integrated with each other. We spent a year collaborating on a bridge between Filecoin and Ethereum through Codefi DeFi Bridge, and Infura's IPFS service transferred more than 300 TB of data this year lonely. Web 3.0 is showing potential to provide more open content creation, the ability to publish, participate, create, run due east-commerce, communication, video, etc.

We'll also closely be participating in the scaling of Ethereum, both with our research contributions to Eth2, our customer squad Teku, Codefi Staking, and Infura's Beacon Chain API. Merging Eth1 and Eth2 may happen in 2021, and nosotros expect forrard to a more than flexible and scalable settlement layer for the planet.

In the early on 1990s, you couldn't buy anything legally on the internet — we are now seeing the same democratization in the financial manufacture. Nosotros've replaced bank books and calls to stockbrokers with online interfaces. The distribution of financial services that are accessible to anyone itself is a major accomplishment, and we think this will keep to take off in 2021. I experience that the 21st century is simply about to start in 2021."

Mance Harmon, co-founder and CEO of Hedera Hashgraph and Swirlds Inc.:

"In 2021, the intersection of three trends — tokenization, DeFi and business concern logic moving to layer two — will pave the manner for enterprise adoption of public DLT networks. These trends, combined with tough lessons learned from attempted private network deployments, have caused enterprises to exist amenable to public DLT networks in ways they were not previously.

Today, digital tokens are existence designed for economic activeness within supply chains, not simply as a mode for startups to raise uppercase. The combination of tokenization, fiat-backed stablecoins, and DeFi — the underlying engineering science, not the short-term hype — will make traditional financing operations faster and less costly, fundamentally changing the existing processes for buy order financing, obtaining loans for working capital, purchasing insurance, securing inventory financing and invoice factoring.

And enterprises are realizing that they can take their applications execute business logic in layer-two networks and simply use layer one for consensus and arbitration. This approach combines the benefits of public networks (distributed trust) with the benefits of private networks (low price, scalability, privacy and regulatory compliance).

The intersection of these trends will provide the foundation for enterprises to use DLT in routine business transactions, driving pregnant acceleration in enterprise adoption in 2021."

Mathew Yarger, caput of mobility and automotive at the Iota Foundation:

"2021 is going to be a year of hybrid DLTs, interoperability and real-world integrations. We're going to run across it as a big transition year for the DLT space. Moving forrad from the faulty mindset of "DLT is the cure" to the realistic understanding that DLT is a tool, just like artificial intelligence and cloud services.

Nosotros should meet a growing agreement that some DLTs are proficient for some things, while others are skilful for other things, and they can exist combined in interesting means for interesting solutions. Other big themes to picket out for include: interoperability between permissioned and permissionless DLTs for business applications, connection of IoT focused DLTs to cloud-hosted DLT environments, verification of primal insights using DLT for consumer-facing solutions, and testing of more than secure architectures in real-world environments predominantly in healthcare, energy, mobility and supply concatenation solutions where the ecosystems are highly fragmented or highly regulated.

At that place are a lot of businesslike and exciting things that are going to permeate through technology, affecting traditional tech companies with them showing stiff commitments in the DLT space, and pushing their technologies in new and interesting ways."

Mike Belshe, CEO at BitGo:

"We believe 2021 volition be the year institutional investors accept and agree with the Bitcoin thesis: that scarcity of the nugget is paramount to long-term value. As such, nosotros wait 2021 to be a very potent year for BitGo and the industry as a whole. A combination of factors brought on by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the influx of institutional investment and the bull run of Bitcoin will go on to accelerate growth and attract new investors on both the retail and institutional side in the new yr.

Longer term, we besides see tremendous potential as the future of money depends on a transparent, cost-efficient manner to carry concern across borders, likewise equally help people around the globe have greater access and freedom to build financial security. We feel strongly that nosotros will continue to advance growth in 2021 and attract new investors on both the retail and institutional side."

Paul Brody, principal and global innovation leader of blockchain technology at Ernst & Young:

"Adoption of the Ethereum mainnet by enterprise customers and early on-stage adoption of privacy-enabled DeFi by enterprise users. Rapid maturing of DeFi security and inspect tools. Early adoption of decentralized business applications across finance. A shift from DApps to ZApps — goose egg-knowledge applications that practice the aforementioned piece of work, simply support user privacy. First regulatory frameworks that specifically cover fiat-currency-linked stablecoins and their use in consumer and business applications."

Roger Ver, executive chairman at Bitcoin.com:

"Nearly every year has been better than the year before. I don't recollect this is going to change for 2021."

Samson Mow, chief strategy officer at Blockstream:

"In 2021 we're going to see Bitcoin make incredible gains as more than and more than institutional players leap in. Withal, we're also going to see a tidal moving ridge of shitcoinery launder over the retail market every bit scammers attempt to ride on Bitcoin's aura to enrich themselves."

Scott Freeman, co-founder and partner at JST Majuscule:

"We think a lot of these existing trends effectually institutionalization will continue and expect to run into a lot of growth, particularly inside decentralized credit and decentralized derivative offerings over the side by side 12–eighteen months.

Nosotros recollect that investors volition beginning looking at crypto a bit differently, as people view Bitcoin more than equally a shop of value and start looking at the utility value of other coins. This could lead to a reduced correlation between traditional crypto assets and greater investment opportunities."

Vinny Lingham, CEO at Civic:

"This yr was a warm-up for next year. In 2021, we'll see decentralized storage, decentralized finance and not-political currencies take off.

My picks for top performers are Bitcoin, Ether and Filecoin. However, Ethereum scaling bug need to be resolved side by side twelvemonth if we expect to run across connected success in 2022."

These quotes accept been edited and condensed.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors' solitary and do non necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This commodity does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading movement involves hazard, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.