What is the future of Bitcoin and its underlying technology? The question was posed to Balaji Srinivasan, the CEO of 21 Inc. during an interview at the WSJDLive Global Technology Conference. Bitcoin has been making waves in fintech sector for a while now. Many companies and financial institutions are exploring the possibility of using bitcoin or its underlying technology – blockchain technology to suit their needs. It was a very valid question asked to one of the top guys at one of the leading bitcoin and blockchain technology company.
According to Balaji Srinivasan, with respect to growth and life cycle, bitcoin and blockchain technology’s progress will be similar to that of a well-known open source operating system, Linux. He brings into attention that Linux has come a long way to power most of the machines which people use every day without even realizing that it is Linux deep underneath. For example, Android operating system running on a large percentage of smartphones across the world. While most people don’t realize, Android runs on Linux kernel. Similarly, we can expect bitcoin and blockchain to be powering most of the applications and even future devices.
Balaji Srinivasan also goes on to predict that the bitcoin, which is known as a form of money today may not remain the same tomorrow. Bitcoin will likely be known as a protocol than currency in the near future as various applications will soon be built on blockchain. Already there are applications to manage digital rights, electronic records, financial tools etc. that use blockchain technology and we can expect it to spread further to other domains soon.
He also mentions the day when all devices will be connected to each other over blockchain and devices can make use of the power to mine bitcoin or other digital currencies.
To summarize, according to Balaji Srinivasan, the future looks good for bitcoin and blockchain technology.
The article was first reported in the Wall Street Journal.