We've all been swarmed by the bitcoin media craze over the last year or so.
As much hype that's gone into the cryptocurrency, I'm holding onto my bullish outlook on the cryptoasset and, more importantly, on its underlying technology.
Within a regularly rebalanced investment portfolio, a small amount of cryptoassets (about 1% to 5% of your allocation) can improve your risk-adjusted returns. According to Matt Hougan of Bitwise Asset Management, "crypto has combined high returns with low correlations to other asset classes, which is a pretty good combo for portfolio construction."
In order to address several issues with Bitcoin investing and trading, several asset management companies are racing to launch a regulated exchange-traded fund (ETF) for the cryptocurrency. Business Insider reported that on February 9, 2018, JPMorgan informed its clients of the benefits that Bitcoin ETFs would bring, underlining the following:
- Easier access: "Investors need wallets to trade the physical Bitcoins today, making it hard to access. ETFs are frequently traded and highly accessible via investors' brokerage accounts."
- Liquid market: "ETFs are actively traded and highly transparent."
- High integrity: "ETFs are traded through brokerage accounts that carry with them insurance via SIPC. Bitcoin exchanges have no such insurance and expose holders to potential fraud and theft."
A bitcoin ETF would change the bitcoin investing game.
... and so would the implementation of blockchain technology within certain industries. Take the digital advertising industry, for example, and a rampant problem within that industry - ad fraud.
How big of a problem is ad fraud? A report from Juniper Research estimates that the cost of digital advertising fraud will hit $19bn in 2018, representing 9% of the global spend on digital advertising.
How are digital advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, are currently utilizing blockchain to combat fraud?
Click here to read an in-depth article describing how some of the worlds biggest ad spenders, like Nestlé, AT&T, and Bayer, are investigating the use of blockchain to try and weed out advertising fraud once and for all.
As more ad dollars shift from traditional advertising channels to the digital ad platforms, the industry will continue to thrive meaning more opportunities for blockchain-related ad-fraud companies. And this is just one example of an industry being disrupted by blockchain technology. The Coin Central blog features insightful articles on other examples of blockchain disruption.
Here's to future disruption 🍻