TREND #5: DIGITAL CURRENCIES

Here’s Trend #5 out of the 10 Future Trends 2017 I’m posting over 10 days. Trend #5 has been a long time coming - Digital Currencies.

While digital wallets like Apple Passbook & Google Wallet, and Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin & Ethereum have been around for some time, 2017 will be the year of mass adoption.

Why? Because it’s getting exponentially easier to access and trade in digital currencies.

Companies like Stripe, which just raised $150 million at a $9 billion valuation on Black Friday (http://bit.ly/2gqd8uU) now allow you to accept Bitcoin with one click of a button. Just yesterday, iPayYou launched Amazon Direct, allowing you to buy any products on Amazon using Bitcoin.

Whether you use a cryptocurrency or digital payments with national currencies, one-click pay buttons have now appeared on all the major social media sites from Facebook to Twitter.

There are now over 700 cryptocurrencies and Governments are finally coming to terms with them, while supporting their own moves towards digital currencies. This month Sweden announced it was looking to launch the first Government-issued digital currency, the “e-kroner”. Sweden is already leading the way in cashless economies, with only 2% of transactions now in cash and 98% in digital payments.

On November 8th, India scapped its high demonination bank notes in a move to cut corruption and move more people to digital payments. Since then, Paytm (India’s largest digital payments startup) has said over 45 million have used its service. That’s more users in 10 days than the population of Canada.

One of the fastest growing areas in digital currencies is in mobile payments. Here’s 3 mind-boggling facts on how fast mobile payments is growing:

1) IDC forecasts mobile mobile payments will reach $1 trillion in 2017 - up 124%.

2) Tractica forecasts smartwatch payments will grow from $3 billion in 2015 to $501 billion by 2020.

3) MarketsandMarkets forecast the African mobile money market (where countries like Kenya and Tanzania are leading the way in mobile digital money) will grow from $2.7 billion in 2015 to $14.3 billion by 2020.

What will this shift mean for your business and industry? Here’s the top 3 impacts:

Micro-payments will rapidly grow, changing the way we price our products.

Community-currencies will grow, with company-issued currency from Air Miles to Pokecoins becoming common place, giving us all the ability to create our own currencies.

Peer-to-peer payments will continue to rise, allowing us to exchange without the need for government currencies or banks.

The result? 2017 will be the beginning of a new era in which money begins a switch from being a scarce resource to becoming an abundant means of exchange.

“We each have the choice in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity. Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency.” ~ Lynne Twist

You can read Trend #1 here: http://bit.ly/2017Trend1 Trend #2 is here: http://bit.ly/2017Trend2 Trend #3 is here: http://bit.ly/2017Trend3 And Trend #4 is here: http://bit.ly/2017Trend4

These 10 Trends are being posted over 10 days as part of our Fast Forward Summit 2017 Launch. Join us in one of our cities here: http://fastforward.geniusu.com/