‘Every Company Will be on a Blockchain’: A Recap of Avestix’s Latest Webinar

Last week, Avestix hosted Unlocking Crypto and Blockchain Technology, an invitation-only webinar examining the latest blockchain innovations, AI, Web3 and decentralized finance (DeFI) and what those innovations could mean for accredited investors.  

Susan Lindeque, CEO and founder of Avestix Group, moderated the event. R. Adam Smith, senior partner with Avestix and Chris Kelly, venture capital investor and co-owner of the Sacramento Kings, offered their insights into how these technologies will eventually operate in unison on the blockchain, helping open up new opportunities for investors.   

Susan kicked off the webinar by reminding attendees that — despite Bitcoin’s rally last week — it wasn’t so long ago that investors shunned the cryptocurrency. “Originally, Bitcoin had very little value,” she said. “It was just a novel payment mechanism. There was a day in 2010, which is now called Bitcoin Pizza Day, where someone paid 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas.”

Fast forward to today, she said, and the value of Bitcoin and blockchain — the digital ledger supporting it  — are widely recognized by investors and executives.  

“As we know, blockchain is much more than just a payment system. It has set the stage for smart contracts and tokenization. It is 100 percent redefining the landscape in terms of DeFi, how we transact with finance, and where payments are going into the future,” Susan said. Given this widespread acceptance, Susan believes the day will come when “every single company out there will be on a blockchain system.”  

A $230 Trillion Opportunity

To support her assertion, she shared Avestix research indicating that five of today’s most innovative platforms — AI, robotics, fintech, quantum computers and IoT — could eventually operate on blockchain platforms that serve as the “underlying technical infrastructure.”  

As a result, she says, the individual value of each of these platforms will likely grow exponentially.

“The current market valuation of all of these disruptive, innovative platforms is about $13 trillion, but if we fast forward that to 2030, we [may see] a 17x increase in value — $230 trillion — which is just astonishing,” she said.  

Chris Kelly agreed. “It's just an exciting time for everything that's going on in blockchain and in crypto in general,” he said “The two biggest [crypto] players continue to be Bitcoin and Ethereum. But, with the changeover in [presidential] administrations here in the U.S., I think you'll see a lot more attention paid to some other players.” 

In the meantime, Chris said, Bitcoin use cases will continue to gain traction. “The possibilities of what we may see in terms of change include everything from establishing a Bitcoin strategic reserve — which a number of people have advocated for —   [to] the use of Bitcoin as a potential, day-to-day payment system,” he said. 

Blockchain Goes Mainstream

Concurrently, he expects to see mainstream use of blockchain technology expand as well, triggering a potential shift to other blockchain platforms as corporations begin to embrace smart contracts and other blockchain-based tools.  

Susan agreed. “I think we will end up in a place where every company will be on a blockchain, whether it's a private permissible blockchain or a public blockchain,” she said. 

When asked to identify current challenges that so far have stalled the widespread use and scaling of blockchain, Chris said he believes many newer blockchain platforms need to gain credibility in the eyes of users. “The Bitcoin system has been … well distributed; its value is well established,” he said. “The Ethereum system is also quite established. But others that started after those that aspire to be ‘level one’ chains always have challenges. If you look at some of the private blockchains like Hedera, … they need to have all of these allies around them to run the systems that continue to validate the blockchain. Getting to that critical mass is a difficulty for any new system.” 

Given this gradual rise of competing chains and cryptocurrencies, Susan asked Chris how Bitcoin’s value might be impacted by 2040. “I think that Bitcoin probably has another doubling or two from here,” he said. “But, I could be completely wrong about that. It's likely to increase in value substantially over time as we figure out the way that it ends up playing in governments and payment systems. And with a pro-crypto U.S. administration, but I do think its value will continue to go up.” 

Chris was also asked if any corners of “traditional finance” are immune from the blockchain revolution. “The simple answer is no,” he said. “The themes of trust and provability that Susan has been talking about are all absolutely critical. The working theory is that … every traditional finance system will be replaced by a blockchain-based system.”

Getting there won’t happen overnight, Chris said, acknowledging that institutional and consumer trust needs to be established, but he believes in the end decentralized ledgers will gain mainstream acceptance.  

“The marketplace will demand this. It will take some time, and some centralized players will continue to wield a great deal of power. Traditional banks will resist a lot of the ways that the revolution is going to happen, but it is inevitable at this point — especially when systems have proven the ability to work at scale,” he said.

Next Steps

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