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Why 2020 Looks To Be The Year Of Bitcoin & Business

More And More Enterprises Are Starting To Leverage Bitcoin Technology

Bitcoin is by far the most popular digital asset in the world, with it consistently maintaining nearly 70% dominance over the entire cryptocurrency market cap.
In 2019, we saw yet another year of explosive Bitcoin price increases and further adoption around the world.  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, 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 of the 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 customize their blockchain from the ground up, so in theory, 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 consumes a great deal of time and personnel as well.
Is all of that really necessary anyway, when a proven network like Bitcoin already exists?  Development on top of the Bitcoin blockchain wasn’t seriously looked at as a credible option by most major businesses until this year when Microsoft announced their new plans this past May.  Their permissionless, Decentralized Identifier (DID) network, christened “ION”, is being designed to run completely on top of the Bitcoin blockchain.
This bold new direction from one of the world’s technology 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 own developers, and they have shown to be extremely cautious and restrictive about making any changes that could possibly introduce new security issues and compromise the protocol.  It’s also easy to analyze the data with a number of easy-to-use blockchain explorers and surveillance tools available.
• Smart contracts – Back in 2010, opcodes were taken out of the Bitcoin that led to the prevention of smart contract implementation.  Recent developments have changed all of 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 now cheaper and faster than ever without compromising security in the slightest.
• Increased transparency – A native feature of the Bitcoin blockchain.  The developers have stayed away from privacy features seen in other public protocols like MibmelWimble, STARKs, and ZK-snarks.  This is a positive, as these features can make transactions difficult to audit and verify, something business 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 such as the ones Ethereum and EOS are currently facing.  Add to that the fact that the security concerns that 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 Bitcoin networks, can be solved using Keep’s tBTC or an Interledger Protocol (ILP) bridge.
As we’ve seen, the Bitcoin protocol has a wide array of advantages of 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.