Futures Friday: The most expected in 2020
The new decade is here! What to expect from the Cryptoverse? Which trends will be shaping the industry in 2020? And what are the most expected events in Fintech? Find it out with BTCMEX.
Crypto in 2020 by BTCMEX
The blockchain and crypto markets are far from slowing down. 2019 has set the trends and was named the year of DeFi. It saw new groupings, new innovative trading solutions, and a number of blockchain protocols emerging and maturing. Global regulators turned their heads towards cryptocurrencies, and China has entered the global Fintech competition.
Decentralized Finance
DeFi has won its ground by introducing wide-ranging advantages, innovations, and breakthroughs. DeFi projects have now crossed the value of $650 million. It was hard to imagine a couple of years ago, but today miners and crypto enthusiasts are enjoying keeping crypto as collateral, crypto lending opportunities and multiple options for margin trading, as well as many more financial services that definitely will keep growing and flourishing in 2020.
Crypto Derivatives
The derivatives market has grown in size and accessibility, it’s being explored and defined, as well as improved significantly. Futures, Options and Perpetual Contracts are widely traded on various platforms like BTCMEX. This development will make the market more competitive as well as the crypto exchanges strive for improvements and innovations.
Bitcoin Halving
The next Bitcoin halving is expected to happen in May 2020, and the reward for mining a Bitcoin block will be 6.25 BTC. The biggest question is whether the BTC/USD price will repeat the pattern of “to the moon” rallies, witnessed after previous halvings, or… not? Financial analysts and crypto observers are currently flooding the web with BTC price predictions, and the majority is expecting more volatility.
Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum blockchain is slowly and steadily moving towards the Serenity. It has been discussed and developed since 2018 and the first phase was successfully implemented at the end of 2019. The Ether community has already given positive feedback on the implementations, and the partial 2.0 launch could be seen in 2020.
Lightning Network
An important breakthrough that solved the scaling problem by taking transactions away from the main network indeed set a benchmark in blockchain technology. The protocol uses off-chain data to catalyze the transaction speed and also decreases the associated charges. In the year to come, we will witness more projects empowered by the Lightning Network technology which will certainly improve the market efficiency.
Privacy and Anonymity
The data privacy has become one of the biggest concerns recently. On the other side, the issue led to the development of various privacy-protection tools, like a zero-knowledge privacy protocol. Seems like there will be further movements in the individual’s data protection field.
Mass adoption VS Regulations
Rising crypto awareness and acceptance has driven financial regulators’ attention. Central banks all around the world one by one announce digital currencies pilot projects. New laws are baked around blockchain and cryptocurrencies. As 2020 is going to be quite viral for Fintech and crypto, we are likely to expect more and more attempts to regulate the decentralized.
Please note, that the article is a part of BTCMEX Blog, the views and opinions expressed here are the contributing author’s only, and do not necessarily represent the views of the company.
Julia Bulakh for BTCMEX