My dad wanted to know more about blockchain so I wrote this for him. I thought it might be useful to those who still haven’t done much research into the crypto sphere, so I’m sharing it here first. Let me know if I’m messing anything up. (Not an adviser, duh)

thuglife

Yo dad. You said blockchain went over your head. I don’t think it’s so important to understand exactly how it works but the use cases are pretty important to understand because it’s going to reshape the whole economy, the internet and a bunch of other industries . I made a list for you of how it’s most likely going to be used in the next 2-3 years, or in some cases, how it’s already being used. I listed some coins just for fun and to show off how much I know ;-)

1 Currency

This is the first generation of crypto and they're all basically trying to fix their algorithms and systems to do what bitcoin does but do it better. None will likely beat bitcoins place a second number one but they may end up being a major currency while bitcoin will remain more like gold. Litecoin has staying power because they get listed everywhere and are widely used as a cheaper alternative. Some privacy coins (Monero, PivX, Verge) will likely survive, some coins seeking to be more energy friendly or faster may also survive (Nano, etc.). Most will fail, and have already dropped out of the top 100.

2 Blockchain Platforms

Etherium was the first and opened up the 2nd generation of crypto through the invention of smart contracts. This allows crypto to do more than just keep track of a value but to perform other functions. Platforms basically work like an operating system for other coins and projects. 90% of apps (and other coins) are built on Etherium but that’s changing quickly. Neo and EOS are my favorite. Stellar and Cardano are also very popular. Icon is going to catch up soon, Qtum could do ok. There are tons of others (Lisk, Achain, Nuls, Elastos) who are still in early phases but 3-4 of these are likely to be the Googles of the future and it’s hard to say with certainty which.

3 Supply chain

Some coins check are able to ensure the authenticity of designer products and the safety and purity of food and medicine. Vechain is the biggest. Ambrosus deals with medicine. I’ve got some Wabi which is a really undervalued one that deals with food products. I’m looking to buy some Origin Trail.

4 Internet of things

Connecting your fridge to your car to your computer to your glasses. Scary stuff if you ask me, but people like convenience and don’t seem to mind surveillance as much as they say they do so this is not going away. IOTA is the biggest one but it’s really premature. IoT chain another. I don’t really understand the functionality of these coins but they have one.

5 Digital IDs and personal data

Another big brothers wet dream if you ask me but sure to become a huge industry. Coins can basically allow you to get paid for sharing your information and to verify that you are who you say you are (and went to the school you say you did etc.). Blockchain will make it nearly impossible to fake an identity but also make everything about us permanent (“That’s going on your permanent record” is what they used to say in school, right?). There is a broad use case, from general/business use (Ontology, Civic) to medical records (Lympo, patientory) to consumer usage (Nucleus vision) where they know what you are going to buy when you walk the door. So the butcher will have your salami all ready and cut for you with your name on it when you walk in the door, yay! You know I hate this stuff.

6 Gaming

So you’ve unlucked a sword which is 10x more powerful than the average sword. You can sell it for tokens and use those tokens to unlock a secret character in another game or cash out into usd or bitcoin. These tokens could also reward the best players in different games. When AI is doing all the work, people will be able to make a living playing Starcraft or solitaire. So we’ll all be able to sit on our asses and play games all day. ;-)

7 Social media

Or we’ll all be bloggers since there isn’t really a need 7 billion or more people to do work when we have AI. Steem is the biggest, kind of like reddit but with original material. Minds is tokenizing. Narrative and ONO aren’t on markets yet. Mithril is like Snapchat (wait, what’s snapchat?). Steem already has dtube to compete with youtube. Synereo is trying to add a layer of monetization to existing social media platforms like YouTube. Facebook will monetize by the end of 2019 or lose their seat at the throne. Get paid to be glued to your cell phone!

8 AI

Sophia has a blockchain, apparently, called Singularity. Deep brain chain and matrix ai network and a Bunch of others aim to put AI and onto the blockchain. This is scary stuff when you consider how the new platforms are trying to connect all blockchains and old institutions are likely to move everything to blockchains AND how blockchain is FOREVER so we could potentially make Siri immortal. Great opportunity for profit, huge technological advances and possibly a robot revolution. Think Westworld multiplied by 2001 A Space oddysy. But huge profits and super Siri’s, so why not, right? I’ve got my deepbrainchain token so I can cash out and move to a tiny island in the middle of the ocean and hide when the time comes.

9 Banking, big business, stock markets and investment

I mean lumping these all together cause they’re all about money and the movement of it. Ripple is at the top but I think Stellar could dethrone it. I have some Polymath which aims to bridge the stock market and crypto. Melon works with investment funds.

Augur, gnosis (got some), stox, and Bodhi are some prediction market coins. Cindicator (that terrifying commercial I showed you) mixes AI with prediction markets. Why not throw sports gambling in here too with Unikoin Gold.

I could add exchange related coins that give perks to people who exchange crypto on their exchanges, binance, Kucoin, huobi, bitshares and a few more.

10 Blockchain infrastructure and ecosystem

There’s are some tokens which deal with improving the whole blockchain infrastructure. They help with things like scalability (faster cheaper), connecting blockchain and some other stuff that goes over my head. Wanchain and a few others seek to help blockchains communicate with each other. 0x does something I don’t understand but all coins based on Etherium (90% now) could potentially use it. There are some others but I forget what they do.

11 Cloud storage

Allows your computer to lend out space to cloud storage and get paid for doing it. There are a ton of these coins, I don’t pay too much attention to them cause it’s hard to say which is the best. Storj and Siacoin are the first thst come to mind.

12 Energy solutions and Distribution of resources (energy, phone minutes, WiFi)

This is one use case I really like. Some coins are looking to help you sell the resources you don’t use, which can help people save money and also help reduce wasted energy. Dent allows you to sell your extra phone minutes while Power Ledger and WePower aim to make it possible to trade clean energy directly between households and clean energy producers.

13 Assets

I see this being a huge industry in the future, the tokenization of assets so that people have shares in anything from real estate to a Picasso painting. There are already platforms that allow you to own shares of a house through their tokens. The stock market is likely to merge with the crypto market before long as well, so instead of owning a share of amazon, you could own a share of a share of amazon.

14 Other

There are many others uses which are further down the road, or more unique and so I can’t go into them as much. Some of my favorite ideas are:

• Decentralized internet which makes censorship impossible (Substratum)
• Finding creative ways to reduce the need for advertising OR to pay people for viewing ads (BAT, Oyster)
• Rewarding people for using their computer power to do computational research to solve real world problems (Grid)
• universal basic Income tokens, not a way to get rich because they can only provide negligible amounts since no one is rushing to invest in these coins, but this may help some of the poorest in the world. (Mana)
• TenX and Monaco aim to create debit cards which allow you to use any of your crypto the same way you’d use regular debit cards. Let’s see if they succeed or is Visa is fast enough to beat them at their own game.

Cool stuff right?

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