In a new study, the UK-based market research company Juniper Research has found that the value of cryptocurrency transactions is expected to surpass $1 trillion in 2017, more than 15 times the level in 2016.
According to the research report, titled “The Future of Blockchain: Key Vertical Opportunities & Deployment Strategies 2017-2022”, the transaction values in H1 2017 surpassed $325 billion, driven by the dramatic increase in Ethereum’s price which accounted for two-thirds of cryptocurrency transaction values in that time.
Also, daily cryptocurrency trades are well in excess of $2 billion. The report found that Litecoin also experienced a surge in volume and value and added that if current levels are maintained, it should exceed $100 billion in transactions this year.
Furthermore, bitcoin also saw a tremendous surge this year, rising from $1,000 to over $4,000. Noting the bitcoin hard fork on August 1st, and subsequent creation of Bitcoin Cash, the report cautioned that a second planned fork in November, when the SegWit2x scaling solution is due to be implemented, may prompt a split in the community, potentially leading to depreciation.
“There is no resolution in sight to the continuing and fundamental disagreements between many Bitcoin miners and Bitcoin Core developers over the future of the cryptocurrency. This in turn could lead to uncertainty about Bitcoin’s future and downward pressure on its valuation,” research author Dr Windsor Holden said.
The research also focused on new blockchain use cases. It claimed that the brightest prospects in the sector came from deployments of private blockchain technologies for permissioned ledgers, rather than the public chains running cryptocurrencies.
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