www.ceotodaymagazine.com 22 SPECIAL FEATURES 2017 has been the year of protocols and community led rounds to fund the latest, fastest, newest next-big-protocol project. Bitcoin peaked at an all-time high of $19,000 after an average trailing price of $1,000 to $2,000 in the last market cycle. Back then, many blockchain enthusiasts punted on which infrastructure protocol will be the next big thing. Some wanted to genuinely facilitate adoption. Some, conversely, wanted to grow their holdings of the alternate coins they had accumulated when such infrastructure protocol projects issued and listed their tokens on a variety of token exchanges. 2018 was a year of corrective market forces in many ways. Funding dwindled, and volumes of shorts peaked with introduction of margin trading capabilities on exchanges such as Bitmex and Kraken. Projects slowly folded one by one when they either could not manage their treasury or failed to achieve more traction in technology development or business application. The community was obsessed with the idea of institutional validation—every rejection of futures trading / ETF proposal for bitcoin sent ripples through the market. But the projects which have preserved through the crypto winter of 2018 will have their moment in 2019. If all this sounded familiar, it is because this has happened before. The internet protocol wars happened while fledging companies focused on the ordinary customer, quietly building user friendly interfaces on the internet for the everyday user to search, shop, or engage easily in small interest groups. These fledging companies have since become household names and established their own monopolies within their domain — think Google, Amazon, or Facebook. Consumer applications are needed for the blockchain to be adopted by the masses. But for it to gain momentum, the blockchain community must move from being a decentralised tribe in motive, to an inspired movement of vision that will allow the Blockchain to become part of the everyday vernacular. Imagine now a version of these companies on the blockchain- but one equipped to actually reward the community. Digital Media Privacy Would Be the Key to a Reward-Based Ecosystem Users Deserve By Christel Queck, Co Founder of BOLT
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