Where will Cryptocurrency be in the next 5 — 10 years?

In the next 5–10 years I can see cryptocurrency being a part of our regular lives the same way current technologies like the internet and mobile communications are.

Here is how see cryptocurrency in the future:

Everything will be fast

You want to send money back home to your grandma who lives on the other side of the world? No problem, you just sent her $5,000 and it only took 4 seconds and cost you less than a cent to do so.

Your business partner in Dubai who is helping you start a hotel franchise needs the franchise fee and he needs it ASAP. No problem, thanks to Ripple you just had $150,000 sent from your business account into your partners business account.

You didn’t even have to wait 3 days, it got there in just 3 seconds and again it cost you less than a cent.

Since money is not the only thing that can be sent over the blockchain, we can expect “download” or file transfer times to be reduced to only a few minutes or seconds. Blockchain based copies of games, music, videos or books will be sent to your “wallet” at speeds that would make todays file transfer services look primitive.

We can already download 1GB files in less than 10 minutes using services like Mega, now imagine a network of blockchains that allow near instant data transfers. People will be paying for games and playing them within minutes.

Everyone will use cryptocurrencies, whether they are aware of it or not

Money transfer is not the use that cryptocurrencies have, they are also used as transaction fees and to pay for services like smart contracts. In the future, businesses will use blockchains like Ethereum and Stellar to deploy self-executing smart contracts across their organizations.

Smart contracts are simply automated contracts which execute once certain conditions are met, for example, when you contribute money in an ICO, it is the smart contract and not the founders that credits you with the new tokens.

As smart contract technology improves, we can expect to see businesses removing the middle men from various processes which then reduces costs and makes their services cheaper for the end user.

All of this will happen in the background without consumers even being aware.

Banks will accept and integrate cryptocurrencies

Survival of the fittest actually applies to being able to adapt to a changing enviroment.

Banks will eventually accept cryptocurrencies and even create whole packages around them.

• People will open crypto bank accounts.
• You will be able to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from standard ATMs’.
• Crypto debit cards will become a normal thing
• Cryptocurrency loans and maybe even crypto currency credit cards will be issued to suitable candidates.

Final thoughts

We haven’t even scratched the surface of what cryptocurrencies are capable of, all the things mentioned in this answer are a fraction of the things cryptocurrency will be used for.

Fun fact: GPS technology and the internet where created by the military and their uses were very limited at the time but now we have companies like Uber.

That’s some food for thought

Part of my “Cryptonites Crypto Answers” series, taken from questions I have answered on Quora.I hope you enjoyed my story, feel free to check out these useful resources below:

You can keep your cryptocurrencies safe and secure with a Ledger Nano S hardware wallet.

You can buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Bitcoin Gold, Stellar Lumens and more from anywhere in the world using CEX

You can buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, IOTA, OmiseGo, EOS, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and more from anywhere in Europe using BitPanda.

You can also keep up with me on Twitter.

Where will Cryptocurrency be in the next 5 — 10 years? was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.