The accelerating adoption of emerging technology
During this time of Covid-19 virus lockdown, many people and industries are in a state of stasis with the hope that coming out of lockdown will recover everything quickly. Many commentators and economic advisors worry about the future, as the impact on jobs and companies could be damaging for many years to come.
The emerging technology industries of Blockchain, AI and some areas of Cleantech are still moving at a fast pace. Although many say these industries have been around for a long time, the investment and application of these technologies are still taking time to move into the mainstream, therefore still emerging. It can’t be said that all companies in these sectors are doing well during this challenging time, but many have solutions that will work well in the future when we try to reduce the risk of further infection. Physical money, ink signatures, physical medical services and many other areas of business and day to day life can be replaced by digital versions that not only make life easier, but safer, in this new world we live in.
As we all work from our homes and spend time in lockdown, we are already using less paper money and spending money digitally with contactless payments and online shopping. As business and customers see the benefit of this, there will only be greater adoption of this going forward. The next phase of digital money is CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency), and in recent news on the 14th of May 2020, the digital euro has been successfully tested for the first time by France’s central bank. Countries around the world are working on projects with Blockchain and CBDC. China has also been vocal and has confirmed that it has begun testing its digital yuan in four cities. Central bank, corporate and public digital currencies will become more mainstream over the next few years, and many companies supporting these initiatives will thrive.
In the Finance sector in Europe, processing of payments and authorisations have moved to digital (e-signatures) with so much of Europe in lockdown. Some banks have made announcements in some jurisdictions that they will want to go back to handwritten signatures when we come out of the lockdown, but there is already a movement from the banks’ customers to insist that solutions are used to streamline these processes going forward. Let’s see who wins this battle. It is likely that some jurisdictions and banks will be progressive, and others will not, but it will only be a matter of time before everything moves to digital.
Another exciting area is medical services that have been forced to use digital services and are likely to keep these processes in place as the customer service is improved and saves money for hospitals/GPs. Projects in this area will succeed off the back of the way the services are now delivered.
Investment professionals are starting to realise that one obvious outcome is that more investment will come into the emerging technology sector to bring these technologies to the mainstream. This investment will generate sales and revenue for these companies, and we will start to see companies rise as they did after the internet boom. This makes it an exciting time for the emerging technology sector. Companies will be born out of this tough economic time that make the most of these opportunities.
Appold is launched today to realise these business opportunities. We are carefully selecting companies to help those that we think have the best chance of success. Appold is an emerging technology advisory and investment company whose main focus is to assist:
• Emerging Technology firms expand their businesses through strategic management and capital solutions
• Investment groups seeking returns within the Emerging Technology sector
• Corporates and Institutions looking to utilise and implement new technologies
Some of the companies we have selected are well known in the industry and have strong management and market presence already. We predict them to be fast growth and Appold is set up to support this. Here are some of the first of our clients:
CryptoCompare – A Global leader in Digital Market data with major corporate clients and deals with the potential for significant growth.
Cygnetise – Authorised Signatory Management on the Blockchain with major corporate clients and deals with the potential for significant growth.
SupraFin – A smart WealthTech platform for crypto-assets with a focus on financial inclusion, pre-revenue but great potential.
ByteTree – A leading provider of institutional-grade crypto-asset data. Their investor terminal tracks over 80 metrics for bitcoin in real-time.
Please see https://www.appold.com/ for more information on the company
Author Credits: Rob Gaskell
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/robgaskell