Haha... what a difference a couple of weeks makes... I had made these broad based predictions for the Cindicator app a couple of weeks ago... and the world is a slightly faster moving place in some ways (economies...) than others (home life...). In many ways, I'm actually quite enjoying the slower pace of life and all of that... however, the threat of economies crashing and the ensuing fallout is something that we are going to need to be prepared for... thankfully, the illness side of things has spared us and our families so far!

So, onwards with the broad based predictions from a couple of weeks ago... to do mostly with Stablecoins, DAOs and the broader acceptance of Bitcoin.

USDC is the stablecoin that is issued by Circle and Coinbase, as such it is seen as a more "regulated" alternative to the more ubiquitous USDT... which makes it more attractive to investors that have more of a foot in the regulated space of finance... and less attractive to others!

Anyway, it was sitting at 450 million USD worth of issuance at the time of the question being asked... and for that number to essentially double out to 1 billion USD during the year was quite a feasible proposition.

However, with the current economic chaos, many different factors are now in play. Firstly, the printing of USD (and other fiat currencies) in a rescue packages around the world... that is combined with the flight to USD as a reserve currency. In the end, I saw these two factors as favourable for stablecoins which are backed by USD... as long as the USD is still seen as a worldwide reserve currency!

In fact, there could be some interest in having USD that is much easier to send than the regular "digital" or physical versions. Especially if there is an interest in moving away from other economies. 100%

Augur is a project that I have been curious about for quite some time... the idea that there could be a decentralised betting market that mirrored the sorts of betting markets that currently exist for outcomes in political and non sport outcomes seemed like a certain thing. However, Augur has struggled to make any traction... in part that was due to the limitations of the Ethereum network, but they now exist on their own chain and network now. I think it is still something that hasn't really collected that much in the way of mainstream attention... which is a bit of death knell for this sort of project. Unfortunately, I don't really see that changing! 0%

I was without any doubt putting this at a certain 100%. DAOs have been growing in popularity and there are a few of them that are moving to fix up their governance... however, there have also been a couple that have voted to dissolve themselves. I do think that this is going to be an area of experimentation in 2020... and as such, there will be at least one that attracts enough attention to garner more than 10 million USD in captial during this time.

Well... the premier stablecoin is really close to XRP in marketcap... I do wonder about the long-term viability of Ripple... or more critically, the use of XRP as a bridging currency. I think that there are more things that need to fall into place that are outside of the control of Ripple for XRP to gain widespread use... and even then, I'm not sure why that would necessarily need to result in a upward gain in value for the XRP token.

So, I see USDT gaining more traction.... (the current chaos helps...) and combined with the less interesting proposition of XRP as a bridge currency, I do think that USDT will overtake XRP to capture the 3rd position... assuming that there are no NEW challengers! 100%

Despite all the recent difficulty with DeFi... I think there is still quite a great deal of interest and pressure to develop this side of crypto. It is quite curious that the notion of cryptocurrencies, which evolved out the disasters of complicated and intertwined financial instruments are now being utilised to recreate the same systems! Sigh....

Anyway, I think that greed and curiousity will overpower good sense... and that DeFi will progress forward... for better or worse. 100%

Ray Dalio is the head of Bridgewater Associates... which is the world's largest hedge fund. So, in essence, this question really is asking if there will be more financial mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrencies. At the time, I thought that the uncertain economic future would mean that there could be some interest in some long shot bets... however, the same barriers remain that have been in place over the last few years. Lack of regulation and clarity, plus the lack of established financial structures and services that large investors are familiar with. It is one thing to own crypto as an individual or a private firm... quite a different thing to do it with some shared responsibility.

Anyway, with the crazy current situation... I think that either personally or as a hedge fund... it could be quite conceivable that large investors like Ray Dalio would make a "small" long shot bet on some new technology/financial systems. Plus, the institutional "on-ramps" and services are more developed than a year or two ago... so there is some degree of "trust" and familiarity. 100%

Coin Tracking

Looking for a quick and easy way to keep track of your cryptocurrencies? Coin Tracking offers a free service that includes manual tracking or automatic tracking via APIs to exchanges, allowing you to easily track and declare your cryptocurrencies for taxation reports. Coin Tracking can easily prepare tax information sheets that are catered to each countries individual taxation requirements (capital gains, asset taxation, FIFO). Best to declare legally and not be caught out when your crypto moons and you are faced with an unexpected taxation bill (unless you are hyper secure and never attach any crypto with traceable personal information, good luck with that!).

Keep Your Crypto Holdings Safe with Ledger

Ledger is one of the leading providers of hardware wallets with the Ledger Nano S being one of the most popular choices for protecting your crypto currencies. Leaving your holdings on a crypto exchange means that you don’t actually own the digital assets, instead you are given an IOU that may or may not be honoured when you call upon it. Software and web based wallets have their weakness in your own personal online security, with your private keys being vulnerable in transit or whilst being stored upon your computer. Paper wallets are incredibly tiresome and still vulnerable to digital attacks (in transit) and are also open to real world attacks (such as theft/photography).

Supporting a wide range of top tokens and coins, the Ledger hardware wallet ensures that your private keys are secure and not exposed to either real world or digital actors. Finding a happy medium of security and usability, Ledger is the leading company in providing safe and secure access to your tokenised future!