An interview series spotlighting global tech influencers, disruptors, visionaries, and of course, innovators.
Happy 2021, Readers! Best wishes for a prosperous and healthy year to you and your loved ones.
As the holiday season begins to ebb -- the three kings have yet to be fêted -- many of us have been looking ahead to 2021 since quarantining, anticipating vaccinations and hoping for a new beginning. So here we are…Adiós 2020 and welcome 2021!
‘Tis the season for predictions.... at last! For years I’ve enthusiastically tapped fintech, tech, blockchain and crypto ecosystems to learn more what key leaders and innovators expected in their sectors during the upcoming year (check out 2020 predictions here). This year’s EKMH Innovators predictions continue to cover a gamut of sectors, topics and trends, including the pandemic, hospitality, fintech, blockchain, DeFi, cryptocurrency, NFTs, Ethereum 2.0, social media, gamification, censorship and data collection. Many thanks to the inspiring trailblazers who shared their insight and whose innovations and leadership will continue to guide us into a brighter future.
On Fintech
CNote CEO Catherine Berman: In 2021, I believe the customization of investments will be a major focus and area of innovation. The acquisitions of Aperio by Blackrock and Parametrics by Morgan Stanley show just how critical customizable solutions are for investors. It also may be the year folks dig deeper into ESG investments to see if results match promises. That’ll open up opportunities for new entrants that can use data to more objectively quantity and verify ESG metrics and performance.
Boss Insights CEO Keren Moynihan, JD/MBA: There will be a divide between financial institutions. Some lenders will want to hold on to the traditional style of banking where it is product first. Others will want to open access to their platform to attract best in class technology to support their customers.
On PropTech
Arrived COO | Co-founder Alejandro Chouza: I think 2021 will be the year where PropTech will rapidly advance the democratization of many different aspects of real estate ownership, management, and investing. We will see mainstream users 1) gain access to all kinds of advanced yet low cost tools and data that were previously too expensive and complex to use, 2) invest in new real estate investing asset classes that had only been available to the wealthy and 3) be presented with innovative solutions that aim to increase the declining levels of homeownership in the US.
PropTech VC Zain Jaffer: As the world sets sights on a vaccine, the type of demand for PropTech solutions will change. The focus for startups in 2020 was about helping the industry re-open safely with tools such as access control, workplace occupancy analytics and 3D virtual tours. The playbook will shift in 2021 to PropTech solutions that provide a richer tenant experience, especially in the hospitality and office sectors. I see a big demand coming for tech-enabled amenities and clean energy solutions.
On Hospitality & Tech
Mr & Mrs Smith Founder & CEO Tamara Lohan MBE: We were, I think, getting very close to ‘fast travel’ in much the same way fast fashion arose. That oh-it’s-nothing weekend in Rome, the quick scoot around St Tropez for a bit of sun, and the air miles involved in getting there – they are being reconsidered. The most rewarding way to travel is, we think, to truly experience a destination, to feel its sense of place and belong, briefly, in its community, rather than just lightly graze its surface; soaking up the hospitality of those little hotels off the beaten path that we specialise in, who are crying out to welcome you back.
This more conscious consumer, will fly less but stay longer, by twinning city, coastal or countryside stays or embracing road trips or travelling more by train. We’re all familiar with remote working, so a blend of work and leisure has become easier than ever. And with this renewed interest in exploring those places much closer to home, that Instagram-fulled quest for the newest, the hippest, the hardest-to-get-into will be happily swapped for some reassuring favourite hideaway with that club sandwich you just really love. Our members will seek an enhanced connection with nature, an enhanced connection with those they love beyond just a significant other, and commit to truly responsible travel.
On Blockchain
Geeq CDO | Co-founder Stephanie So: I am on a mission to provide access to the safest, fastest, and most rewarding paths to decentralized economic activity, for all who seek an alternative to our broken, traditional, and autocratic market structures. However, in order for decentralized economies to succeed, individuals must be willing to participate. Adoption involves a shift in thinking. The key is that people must prefer to interact with each other directly, thereby bypassing gatekeepers in the middle.
During the pandemic, I encountered thousands of people who, as their lives were upended, had risen to their challenges by seeking answers on their own. I was one of those. Because we faced a common enemy in the virus and failures of our institutional safety nets, we went through a profound, shared realization that anyone who wasn’t in the investor class was facing serious trouble. The only way to save ourselves and others was to organize ourselves. 2020 was historic because millions of people were motivated to reach beyond their own physical spheres, in order to create the positive changes they wanted. They weren’t waiting for permission.
That’s exactly the attitude we need for decentralized solutions to grow.
The virus also forced us to realize individual choices can have significant ripple effects on others, positive and negative. There is power in knowing you are not a cog in some market machine. We witnessed the success of scientists working together on new technology, ignoring international and organizational borders in order to go through the fastest and most productive vaccine product cycle ever recorded. It showed us the benefits of organic growth when associations are productive and voluntary.
Between the near-universal experience of difficulties at the local physical level and the increased success of connecting in the digital world, the pushes and pulls toward decentralization are stronger than I ever would have imagined a year ago. What we thought would be the most difficult hurdle – convincing the public at large there was value in this new form of activity – has happened in the blink of an eye. The seeds have been planted far and wide. There is a hunger for new solutions.
As a result, I predict 2021 is the year that demand for decentralized technologies achieve critical mass. This year, the mainstream will be willing to adopt. As a result, pressure will increase to differentiate what we can offer. I think the industry side will have to mature rapidly, paying more attention to cost and meeting a wider variety of customer needs. Everyone is getting more sophisticated. I think blockchain is going to become the technology of choice in industries that are going to try to build more resiliency into their processes. It is going to be fascinating to see how quickly blockchain and crypto will develop to meet those needs, and what will happen to those who sit out one more year.
The Relevance House CRO | Co-founder German Ramirez: 2021 will be the beginning of mass Adoption in digital Finance, digital Assets and cryptocurrencies. We will start seeing an accelerated drive by established institutions and players to bring decentralization into their offering. Last but not least, I expect to start seeing some relevant moves in blockchain based applications engrained into major areas of our economy and even daily lives. The key question to be discussed in all this will be “decentralize or not decentralize.”
SecureX Blockchain Director | EC-Council Blockchain Technology Advisor Sean Brizendine: We will see huge growth in Bitcoin institutionally and welcoming proposals for Blockchain in a regulatory sense that will be interesting to say the least. The importance and utility of stablecoins will become more clear to all as we observe extreme market growth and value met with tremendous volatility and recovery within short periods of time.
ICON Strategy and Communications Lead Ricky Dodds: 2021 Will Mark the Year of the Security Token. For a period of time in 2018, security tokens were the hottest topic in blockchain, but despite many efforts, they never truly took off at the time. That’s because three things were lacking: technology infrastructure, legal understanding, and investor/market sentiment. Today, blockchain technology has made massive strides, as we can see just by witnessing the proliferation of DeFi products and platforms. The legal and regulatory landscape around cryptocurrency, while not perfect, is much more clear, making it easier for people to understand how tokens can represent equity and real-world assets. And finally, the markets have matured greatly. Cryptocurrency investors are more interested in long-term growth than making a quick buck, and they’re more likely to understand the advantages of asset-backed tokens vs. utility tokens that helped drive the last bull run.
The rise of DeFi is a major factor in why security tokens are poised to make a major comeback in 2021 and beyond. Today, we don’t need to rely on centralized exchanges as a secondary market as we did in prior years. Companies wishing to tokenize an asset can do so with a secondary market much more easily with decentralized exchanges, providing efficient liquidity to investors. ICON is working on a way for anyone to invest in tokenized real estate in 2021. There are countless use cases for security tokens, and the industry hasn’t yet scratched the surface. We expect many other projects to enter the security token space in 2021 and beyond, driven by new advances in blockchain technology infrastructure, improved legal frameworks, and market maturation.
Radix CEO Piers Ridyard: 2021 will be DeFi’s biggest year yet. DeFi is not going anywhere -- 2021 will be its biggest year yet, and with bigger years still to come. While 2021 will be a big year for DeFi, most of it will be on the back-end via development muscle. DeFi apps will become easier and cheaper to build, secure, and scale. It will be a big year for making DeFi attractive to new developers and then attracting those new developers to start building.
Right now, the ecosystem is not friendly to those developers, with most having to rely on Ethereum. The rubber has met the road so far in terms of development innovation, but Ethereum also opens itself up to too many bugs or exploits. That can (and has) create(d) million-dollar mistakes. So we may also see some development platform wars in 2021, along with perhaps Ethereum 2.0 and anyone who thinks it can do better than Ethereum 2.0.
The progress of development will also make it easier for DeFi to integrate and “play nice” with traditional finance tools and platforms, so it will be interesting to see what kinds of gestures the world of traditional finance makes to DeFi. We won’t get there in 2021, but it won’t be long before established traditional finance players will have to make a decision about how they might co-opt DeFi without getting co-opted, like media and music publishers did before them in the age of the internet.
So, it may not feel like as big a year as 2020 for DeFi, and the hype may die down a bit, but the actual progress being made will make 2021 DeFi’s biggest year yet. More developer-friendly tools means more developer talent means an end-product that is better for and friendlier to the consumer. DeFi is already winning the war of financial empowerment, but better “software” will further help ease adoption and trust, while preventing the kinds of glitches that could blow up all that. 2021 is perhaps when we’ll really see the groundwork being laid for what will be the “Robinhood of DeFi.”
Dragon Infosec | Temtum Financial Services Lead John Deacon: As vaccines reduce concerns over the current pandemic, contingency planning for future pandemics by governments and private consumers alike will continue to drive significant increases in the adoption and use of digital platforms, and a race-to-digitise across a wider range of sectors and products – most prominently payments, logistics and distribution. We would anticipate that a key advance in 2021 will be serious work by central banks on the issuance of CBDCs. Central banks will be looking for ways to prevent the disintermediation of private sector banks – for example, by restricting access to the CBDC itself to interbank clearing, but permitting banks to create their own retail-level stablecoin backed by the CBDC. This would finally create a digital payment leg for digital transactions, and drive banks to up their game in digital offerings.
As its 12-year anniversary approaches, the resurgence of Bitcoin has diverted attention away from the fact that Bitcoin still fails to operate as a decentralised payment network as originally intended. Instead, an industry of financial intermediaries are creating layers on top of Bitcoin with their own Bitcoin-linked financial products. This renders much of the structure of Bitcoin irrelevant and focuses on one key point – that the total issuance of Bitcoin is limited – turning it into a scarcity proposition like gold as a hedge for QE-focussed fiat currencies. Will 2021 finally see the adoption of a cryptocurrency for genuine everyday payment / transactional usage? It may be that CBDCs and bank-issued stablecoin take the crown here, but my view is still that there is still space in the market for adoption of a payment coin driven by superior underlying technology which is independent of QE and political concerns.
KingSwap Chief Advisor Malcolm Tan: In 2021 we will start to really see the gamification of DeFi. In 2017-2018, gaming was a huge driver of crypto adoption. We saw this with projects like WAX, which introduced a marketplace for video game skins and other virtual goods; with CryptoKitties, which nearly crashed the Ethereum network; and with the countless online “crypto casinos.”
Flash forward to today and DeFi has become a multi-billion dollar vertical. However, it has still yet to fully capture the attention of mainstream users. That will start to change in 2021 as companies make DeFi applications more intuitive and fun to use through gamification. Projects will start tying NFTs to DeFi, allowing people to stake their NFTs to earn rewards, and come up with new and innovative ways to make open finance enjoyable, accessible, and profitable for all.
The gamification of DeFi will also dovetail with the release of Ethereum 2.0. While there are other layer one and layer two protocols driving DeFi’s growth, the ecosystem is still highly reliant on Ethereum. Ethereum 2.0 will potentially make DeFi apps faster and more scalable, which will enable developers to create even more user-friendly and gamified DeFi applications.
On the Overall Industry
Aspire CEO | Technology and Lead Developer Jim Blasko:
Digital Asset Creation is the Future of Social Media: In 2021, everyday consumers will see how easy and inexpensive it is to create a digital asset on a non-technical, highly secure, digital asset creation platform like Aspire for example. This will lead everyone who has a brand (whether by social media presence, personal blog or small business) to realize they want to have one. “Follow me on Twitter” will soon be replaced by “let me send you some tokens” as loyalty programs, digital collectibles, fan clubs and hundreds of other use cases evolve utilizing the low cost, trackability, international transaction capabilities and permanence of digital assets.
NFTs: Non-fungible tokens originally grew in use for artwork, however now digital sports cards and other collectible cards are popping up. (We’re actually seeing major brands like Topps get involved which is a positive sign for adoption.) In 2021, I expect to see more digital collectibles powered by NFTs as more collectors become attracted to the authentication benefits and removal of problems associated with counterfeits.
Censorship: In the realm of social media, self-expression is extremely important. This is what led to the popularity of such programs as Facebook and Twitter. In recent years, we have been witness to extreme censorships of these programs and more so the users, which was not the case in the beginning. Using blockchain, we have a permanent and uncensored way to express ourselves. For example, asset solution platform Aspire allows anyone to “broadcast” permanent messages across the internet and these messages are stored on the blockchain for all to see and no one to alter. This feature is just like any Bitcoin or Aspire transaction, it is a permanent record of data that cannot be changed. I believe the time is coming where a social media program of the people utilizes blockchain technology to permanently store all activity on their platform. The time has come where blockchain technology will finally free us from the censorship of massively powerful programs like Facebook and Twitter.
Uplandme Co-founder Dirk Lueth: In 2021, crypto will go further mainstream and global as more mass market players like PayPal push it further. Its mass adoption will also be driven by more countries seeking alternative places to put their money in order to avoid inflationary risks due to money supply increase by governments. As well, more Altcoins will separate from Bitcoin, while others will lose a substantial market share.
For the gaming industry, it will be critical for M&As by traditional gaming companies acquiring blockchain companies to start learning and getting talent on board. I think we will also see some form of token sales will re-emerge as they were in 2017. 2021 will likely be the year that the first blockchain DApps (excluding exchanges) will pass 100k Daily Active Users–– and that will most likely be a game.
Metaverses are primed for this and will mark the first sign of mass adoption. Blockchain gaming will introduce more non-crypto people than ever, forcing traditional social networks to start paying attention to this space even more. The NFT market is already growing at a rapid pace and I believe we’ll see this even more next year with the first $1M sale of an NFT. We’ll also see the NFT space expand into other industries beyond art and games.
Lastly, in 2021 we’ll see big consumer brands investing heavily into the NFT space, bringing digital versions and replicas onto the market. Many will also join metaverses to accelerate NFT distribution. Even the digital media industry (movies, music, etc.) will get their feet wet with NFTs. Overall, in 2021, we’ll see blockchain gaming and traditional media move closer together as the two can mutually benefit from one another by providing a stronger value proposition altogether.
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