Lei Chen of Xunlei Technology believes that blockchain could give cryptocurrencies a run for their money when it comes to market cap valuations.
While 2017, specifically the last quarter of it, was focused mainly on cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology seems to have risen out of the FOMO ashes to become a business solution that many companies are trying to get their hands on. In fact, it has even resulted in certain platforms changing direction to focus more on disruptive technology. U.S.-based Overstock is one example and so is Xunlei Technology.
Good Things Come in Threes
According to Fortune, the business has evolved from providing digital services to becoming a blockchain-based platform which develops a range of applications and services. The company’s CEO, Lei Chen, discussed how we could even see a single blockchain platform have a total market cap of $30 billion, nearly half of what Bitcoin has. However, in order to see this, three things need to happen.
While speaking at the Fortune Global Tech Forum in Guangzhou, Lei explained that “first, I believe there must be a blockchain architecture that can sustain one-million transactions per second and can have a response time within seconds”.
Lei’s company appears to be working on this already. The platform leases unused processing power from personal computers which have resulted in Xunlei Technology accumulating bandwidth. High levels of capacity are essential and even through blockchain is distributed, it doesn’t mean that it is indestructible. An example of this is the hugely popular CryptoKitties app that crashed the Ethereum network.
Lei also touched on the impact that blockchain technology can have on data protection and management:
Blockchain will challenge the data ownership models of today, because data should be of the people for the people by the people. I think ten years down the road we’re going to see user data in the same way as intellectual property
Global Guidelines for Blockchain Technology
However, there needs to be clear regulations. Lei believes that this can only happen through a global framework. He explained this as the second goal that needs to be achieved:
There needs to be one, somewhat unified, well-thought-out regulation framework that is developed proactively, not reactively.
The land of crypto is attempting to do this with a few regulatory bodies aiming to develop a unified approach to regulations. Live Bitcoin News previously reported that Global Digital Finance (GDF) has collaborated with a range of crypto industry professionals to do exactly that.
Lastly, Lei believes that adoption is one of the key driving forces stating that “if there is a ten-million user application of blockchain today, we would be seeing the entire technology in a completely different light”.
Blockchain technology is being integrated more and more into certain company processes, mostly in a bid to encourage transparency and give users some type of autonomy. The latter can be seen specifically in data management services by allowing people to control what personal information they’d like to share with third parties.
Do you think we could see blockchain-based platforms being as successful as Lei Chen predicts? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Pixabay.