Blockchain and its application in crypto has been met with increasing levels of interests, a Gartner study has found that blockchain is stimated to generate $3.1 trillion in new business value by 2030. The same study emphasized that 2023 will be the tipping point in terms of mainstream adoption, as companies start to explore more realistic means of utilizing the technology.
Imperative to the wider adoption of blockchain and ryptocurrencies, secure and robust developer tools are required, as companies are faced with product development roadblocks while scaling their businesses.
In this article, we discuss some of the key trends in the industry, as well as introduce an upcoming software solution company that can be utilized by all players of the market place.
1. Crypto Wallets
Crypto is a popular investment option due to their low correlation to traditional assets, making it a great diversification tool. In 2017, Morgan Stanley along with other financial institutions listed Bitcoin and altcoins as a new investment class. Crypto companies are also reacting to this new trend, and are quick to offer institutional asset and custodian services, an example can be seen with Coinbase. Amidst recent market volatility, Bitcoin was surging at a point and as investors continue to weigh in on optimism for this digital currency, this draws further interest from general consumers.
To cope with the higher demand in cryptocurrencies, crypto wallet players strive to differentiate themselves in numerous ways, including a wider cryptocurrencies offering, higher security and streamlined operations. Crypto APIs’ key product – Blockchain APIs – addresses these concerns with one integration. TechCrunch awarded the product, a unified infrastructure gateway, as top pick in disrupt for blockchain last year. Blockchain APIs is integrated with 9 blockchains and one of the few software solution providers for Singapore-based Zilliqa, catering for demand from the Asian market.
Crypto APIs work with wallet players to accelerate their product development efforts and reduce operational costs at the same time. The team is supporting Taiwanese startup AuthenTrend, a leading crypto wallet providing fingerprint enabled security authenticators to all players in the crypto market place. With Blockchain APIs, the hardware wallet is able to broadcast transactions to public blockchains integrated under this product. Without this solution, crypto wallet players are required to spend a massive sum of investment to establish and operate nodes, which are then used for communicating to blockchains. This development step is slow and draining on company’s resources, especially emerging ones. A strong
product, coupled with secure infrastructure, works together to ensure the protection of consumers’ interests.
2. Crypto Exchanges
There are many crypto exchanges in the market and customers often find it difficult to understand and select one. One key area of concern faced is in security and it is imperative to look at the underlying infrastructure supporting an exchange’s function.
Crypto APIs work with exchanges around the globe (Swyft from Australia and CashFinex from Estonia) to support their daily operations. Their product helps with generation of deposit
addresses (and can support unlimited IBANs in European countries), and maintains security via Automatic Payments Forwarding of funds from hot to cold wallets, ensuring that funds from customers are directed back to exchanges immediately. This reduces opportunities for hackers activities. Exchanges can also opt to be notified for fund movements on the addresses, via Webhooks feature.
3. Digital and Neo-Banks
Another important trend in the financial landscape are emerging challenger banks. While these challengers are not new in Western countries, they have are only starting to surface in the Asian economy over the last 5 years. Japan may be Asia’s leader as the first to issue laws for the legalization of crypto currencies, but a closer look at Hong Kong also reflects the booming activity there – Airstar bank led with their launch on 30th March, followed by
Standard Chartered backed Mox Bank. ZA Bank recently debuts its next stage of digital transformation – an insurance platform – this week. Analysts are expecting the same wave to follow in Singapore once the results for digital banking licenses are announced later this year.
A study by Deloitte shows that traditional use cases for blockchain technology in financial services include trade finance, customer onboarding, regulatory reporting, and cross-border payments, but companies are starting to explore revenue generating uses cases. A huge portion of this pipeline Includes crypto-trading services, as financial giants are also pressured to face the disruption caused by new technologies as a whole. As they enter the crypto market, they too, will be sourcing for software solutions that simplify the creation of new consumer applications.
As Asian governments step up regulations on digital assets, we may expect mainstream adoption to accelerate as consumers gain confidence with intervention from authorities. When markets reach this point, it’ll be interesting to see the well-established financial players interact with the crypto market place.
By Karin Ng of Crypto APIs
