Big companies are winking at the cryptocurrency

Article published in “Milano Finanza” (February 6, 2019)

You can’t see the run that it’s around. We got used to amazing presentations, sudden statements and impressive accelerations by global economic and technological giants. All these things are changing the world under our noses overnight. Actually, we know that few people come to expose themselves publicly while they’re working on a specific technology or on a new idea and enthusiasts have to be content with classic rumors. The same thing is happening in cryptocurrency and blockchain industries. One name above all is Google.

If we consider for a moment a story like this asset, we might think that all of big companies had resistance accepting it: for decades the phenomenon stayed under-the-radar, as if it wanted stay hidden and unknown to the members of “formal” economy. Creating technology able to establish itself on a worldwide scale at the expense of the common technology and mining a new currency – for the first time not physical but made by unique and unalterable code – look like stage of a project towards the establishment of an economic and technological system alternative to the mainstream system (a potential threat as such).

We understand that’s not the case over time. It has now become clear that blockchain and cryptocurrencies are not an instrument of the devil but an important opportunity to develop the mechanisms that manage the world (democracy, health, economics etc…), structures and chance for economic and technological giants. They are faced with a new model of intelligence, a new way to expand further faster than ever with a lot less risk  than in the past.

Google, as we said earlier, has had a partnership recently with two startups specializing in blockchain (BlockApps and Digital Asset) to create new applications. The idea was to put in the Google Cloud Platform instruments in order to allow users to exploit the blockchain technology usefully for their activities and their clients. It seems that the platform attributable to Ethereum (one of the most important and well-known cryptocurrencies) is part of this project.

Ethereum users have enthusiastically welcomed this news because they are aware that if Google puts the spotlight on you, your value grows out of all proportion and it won’t be long before the other giants come forward. Actually, Google did nothing more than brings itself into line with other global tech giants which are starting to give offers like “Blockchain as a service” (Microsoft, Amazon and IBM to name just a few.

Companies are adapting themselves to this change thanks to trained professional’s work: they are paid handsomely, selected specifically to work on these platforms in order to provide possible use and development. They are the workers of the future and they will be the occupations required when the blockchain will definitively establish itself (it won’t be long till this to happen). For this reason the leading universities in the world are developing specific training programmes about these new occupations. In Italy, for example, the Link Campus University, jointly with Consulcesi Tech, has launched the first MBA in “Blockchain and Economics of Cryptocurrencies”. Its main objective is to give the elements required for establish themselves in the industry:  especially technical study of the matter, development of programming capacity and economic deepening. These paths will become more common and it is not difficult to foresee a sudden explosion of requests by professionals able to use this technology at best.

It is clear that we are on the verge of a historic change, or rather, we are precisely on the hiatus that divides the “before blockchain” from what comes after. Biggest corporations in the world, most advanced State structures, international economy, labour market:  the wave that we are surfing comes forth to be all. The wave won’t destroy anything. All will be converted into something new and more effective. Something definitive.