by Marco Wutzer, Casey Research:

Chris’ note: As regular readers know, Marco Wutzer is my go-to expert when it comes to the latest and biggest developments in the blockchain space.

Marco is the senior analyst of Disruptive Profits – our elite newsletter in which Marco shows you how to take full advantage of the rise of blockchain technology.

He’s also a true crypto pioneer. He’s been involved with digital currencies since the late 1990s… and made so much money speculating on them that he dropped everything a few years ago to travel the world.

In short, it pays to listen to him. That’s why I recently got him on the phone to see what’s on his radar today… As you’ll see, there’s a lot to look forward to…

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Chris Reilly, managing editor, Casey Daily Dispatch: Marco, I know you’ve been doing a lot of traveling this year… uncovering the biggest opportunities in the blockchain space.

In June, you went to the UNCHAIN Convention in Berlin. You also attended the Crypto Valley Blockchain Conference in Zug, Switzerland.

What was the vibe like over there?

Marco Wutzer, senior analyst, Disruptive Profits: It was buzzing with activity. This year’s conference drew 1,200 attendees, 300 companies, and had 150 speakers.

One of the things that was surprising to me is how deeply banks are already involved in the blockchain space.

They have to be. Or risk getting left behind.

Multinational Dutch banking giant Rabobank is one example. As I learned, it will soon offer a real-time “blockchain bank account” to its millions of customers.

So the way I see it, it’s probably going to look a lot like when online banking came out.

Initially, only a few banks had it, but eventually, more and more banks used it. Nowadays, I don’t think you can survive anymore without online banking. Who goes to a bank branch anymore these days? It’s all online.

And I think with the blockchain bank account, it will be a similar thing. As soon as a few banks come out with it, and the retail users get familiar with buying tokens, then at some point all the banks have to do it.

Otherwise, they’ll no longer be competitive.

Rabobank is just one of the banks that I learned in detail about what they’re doing. But I would imagine that many other banks and brokerages are working on similar things. So I think over the next few months we will see that roll out in quite a few countries from quite a few institutions.

Chris: In your July issue of Disruptive Profits, you said, “Central bankers are dead men walking.” Can you get more into that?

Marco: Well, the trend is clearly towards a decentralized future. And this is something where piece by piece, little by little, central bankers will become completely irrelevant over time.

Because once we reach a critical mass where people, companies, and banks realize the benefits of the trustless, decentralized nature of the Blockchain Ecosystem, at some point, it will no longer be feasible to work with fiat currencies. Because if you look at the history of fiat currencies, all of them have failed. All of them. And even if you look at the U.S. dollar, it has lost 90%-plus of its value already.

Right now, a lot of the third-world countries and emerging markets have really, really crappy currencies that are really not worth anything outside of their borders. They fail so often that we will very soon reach a point where people are used to using crypto tokens. We’ll get to a point where launching a new fiat currency will become a futile endeavor. People will just stick with the crypto tokens.

And so, slowly but surely, this will then roll out across the globe. And, of course, this is a process that will take decades. So we’re just in the very, very beginning of this. But it’s interesting to see how the central bankers come to a small little crypto conference, and these are central banks running hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars’ worth of assets. They come to little crypto conferences to see what’s going on and to interact with the people. They actually think they will be relevant in the future.

Chris: You say this is a process that will take decades. Is there anything big happening in the space as we speak?

Marco: Yes, one thing that I think will happen fairly quickly is the security tokens.

The Blockchain Ecosystem is made up of five layers. The first four layers – hardware, core, blockchain, and protocol – make up the ecosystem’s infrastructure.

Beyond the infrastructure is the token/asset layer.

The token/asset layer will eventually become the biggest one, as more and more assets become tokenized, meaning they’re represented on blockchains.

And now, Security Token Offerings, or STOs, are a new trend that will soon take off and become huge.

This new trend is picking up, and it needs to be on our radar as the ecosystem builds out.

All existing securities like stocks and bonds will become tokenized.

There are already many security token platforms where you can issue a token that then represents an asset, which could be a company, a royalty stream, or a piece of real estate. Any kind of asset, really. And this was something where I was surprised to see how many asset managers and people and companies were interested in the space. People were at the Crypto Valley Conference specifically for that.

So this is one of the spaces within the world of blockchain that will pretty much take off next year, as we get more regulatory clarity and these platforms mature just a little bit more.

There is a lot of demand for it, and it will bring a lot of liquidity to assets that are not that liquid now. So it’s marginally better for things like real estate because it improves the process a lot. But it brings all kinds of things, like niche assets from any kind that are not easily tradable, like royalties, entertainment royalties, art, collectible cars, and stuff like that.

It will get to a point where even small businesses can be tokenized and you can own shares in iconic buildings, little corner stores, or even a food truck. So the whole space is about to take off. It’s all starting to come together.

Chris: That sounds like a huge development in the space.

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