Kaspersky published its 'Cryptocurrency Threat Predictions for 2019' document and it doesn’t look bright for the future of crypto and blockchain.
The report starts with the notes from last year’s predictions and their realizations this year.
- ‘Ransomware attacks will force users to buy cryptocurrency’, which is more or less accurate for 2018. Ransomware is still a big threat for communities and institutions.
- ‘We will see targeted attacks with malicious miners’, this didn’t come true except for several isolated incidents.
- ‘The rise of miners will continue and involve new actors’, this one is also partially realized, however, the drop in crypto prices and unprofitable mining in general, overruled this prediction.
- ‘There will be more web-mining’, this prediction turned out to be partially correct. Web-based mining is associated with malicious activity and therefore it is quite limited now.
- ‘The fall of ICOs (Initial Coin Offering)'. ICOs raised a great amount of funds in general, however, most of them are either unsuccessful or fraud. ICOs are a disappearing form of fundraising nowadays.
In light of these partially correct forecasts, Kaspersky predicts three important things for 2019. Time will tell if they will come true.
1. Blockchain use will be limited to crypto related activities.
Kaspersky thinks that blockchain implementation has been tested for many years now and it didn’t produce beneficial applications so far. In 2019, trying to implement blockchain in different spheres of industries will diminish.
2. Crypto will not be used as a major payment tool.
Since 2017, several suppliers tried to use crypto as a payment tool. A problem of slow transaction speeds, commissions, declining number of customers will hinder this process further. For normal businesses adopting crypto for payment will cost more than it is worth.
3. No moon in 2019.
Crypto prices will not see the same levels as they saw during the last period of 2017. Crypto community will eventually saturate and prices will not reach a new all-time high again.
Correct predictions or not, these are Kaspersky’s well-educated guesses. Crypto proved itself more than once as a new phenomenon to which old prediction methods won’t be necessarily applied.
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