11 CEOs and founders on whether cryptocurrencies will be mainstream in 2019

Mike Segar | Reuters

While bitcoin is the king of cryptocurrencies, most people still aren't using it day to day, and thousands of other coins remain largely undiscovered, which means crypto still hasn't achieved mass adoption.

The hype surrounding crypto tends to be split between extremes: the good (such as reinventing industries, gaining control of our financial assets) and the bad (such as online security and liquidity). And ever since the massive spike in bitcoin prices around summer 2017, much has been said about the magic that is blockchain, but much has also been written about crypto exchanges getting hacked, millions of dollars going to waste and innocent people getting scammed, all thanks to the privacy and anonymity of the technology.

Will 2019 finally be the year where crypto goes mainstream and all obstacles are in the past? Here's what 11 executives of known blockchain companies have to say.

Source: Yoav Vilner

Brandon Synth, founder of Skycoin

"Other than a few selected digital coins, most of those available today hold no value at all. In 2019, the regulations will centralize the market into just a handful of leading, real coins. Then, people will be able to trade them using only a few major and controlled exchanges. So when you take down all the worthless coins, and stop using exchanges that aren't safe, it might be easier to mass adopt in 2019."

— Brandon "Synth," founder of Skycoin, a blockchain and web decentralization platform

Source: Yoav Vilner

Alexander Ivanov, CEO of Waves Platform

"What we're witnessing now is crypto finally gaining long-overdue recognition by businesses, state authorities and the financial world — most importantly, by respected traditional banking and fintech institutions.

"2019 will definitely be the start of crypto's mass adoption, though much more still needs to be done for the two worlds — traditional banking and crypto — to coexist frictionlessly. There are important questions that need to be answered. For example, should banks create coins of their own in order to compete with already established cryptocurrencies?"

— Alexander Ivanov, CEO of Waves, a secure blockchain ecosystem for users and businesses

Source: Yoav Vilner

Anastasia O. Andrianova, CEO of Akropolis.io

"I believe that 2019 will mark the beginning of crypto adoption, as we will see wider institutional expansion in the field and more relevant funding pouring in. An entire mass adoption, however, will take more time as institutional adoption will take more than the next 18 months.

The key factor that requires work is the usability of crypto — user experience, wallet management, etc. More and more companies are aiming to solve that."

— Anastasia O. Andrianova, CEO Akropolis.io, a blockchain pensions platform

Source: Yoav Vilner

Chris Tse, CEO of Cardstack

"Currently, the internet is far from decentralized. The biggest crypto exchanges are successful and have great user experience, but in no way are using the peer-to-peer aspect that makes blockchain a unique technology. In order to mass adapt in 2019, decentralized applications will need to focus on their user experience and so the ecosystem needs to invite designers, product thinkers and researchers into the field."

— Chris Tse, CEO of Cardstack, a decentralized application framework

Source: Yoav Vilner

Carl Bennetts, co-founder of Status.im

"2019 will mark another year of research and a slightly more mature landscape — and significantly larger communities of early adopters. However, challenging computer science problems — in particular blockchain scalability and security will remain the core focus for many researchers.

"In parallel, we will see more developers and designers focusing on creating simpler and more familiar user on-boarding experiences for mainstream use we've come to expect from the applications we use, and an overall lower barrier to entry into the crypto ecosystem."

— Carl Bennetts, co-founder of Status.im, a mobile crypto operating system using peer-to-peer technology

Source: Yoav Vilner

Evgeny Yurtaev, founder and CEO of Zerion

"In my opinion, we are far from real adoption. There is a lack of use cases for cryptocurrencies apart from speculation. The development of new consumer-oriented products finally started to happen this year, especially in the financial sector. Issues of usability and scalability are the factors that lead the emergence of new use cases and drive long-lasting adoption. But I doubt that this process will be even near completion in 2019."

— Evgeny Yurtaev, Founder and CEO of Zerion, an ecosystem that connects crypto investors with blockchain companies

Source: Yoav Vilner

Dejun Qian, founder of the FUSION Foundation

"I am optimistic about the adoption of crypto in 2019. Once the interoperability problem is solved, we will see the mainstream finance motivated to digitize the assets which could interact with crypto. This technology could be a major trigger for a mass adoption in 2019."

— Dejun Qian, founder of the FUSION Foundation, a cryptofinance platform intended to increase the adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Source: Yoav Vilner

Saulo Medeiros, CEO of KindAds

"We will see major adoption in 2019, as the financial system is huge and banks are hard to deal with. With cryptocurrencies, the end user is in charge of the process and is free to do anything at anytime. I once spoke at an event abroad for a big compensation, they took months to deal with the payment. I suggested they send the amount as a cryptocurrency, and it took a few minutes."

— Saulo Medeiros, CEO of KindAds, a blockchain based ad platform

Source: Yoav Vilner

Melanie Mohr, CEO of YEAY

"Crypto is going to be massive, but not by 2019. Most people are trading and speculating but are far from realizing the actual technology. In order for a mass scale to take place, the blockchain needs to become easier and faster. It won't handle a big scale by 2019, but give it 5 years and I can see it happening."

— Melanie Mohr, CEO of YEAY, a peer-to-peer recommendation platform.

Source: Yoav Vilner

Yoav Dror, CEO of PumaPay

"2019 will be the year of adoption, no doubt. Until recently, the main challenge has been the time and cost of processing a crypto transaction. In the case with Bitcoin, the processing time of up to one hour and hefty fees made it unsuitable for daily payments. In 2018, we are seeing multiple cases proving that crypto payments can in fact be fast, cheap and suitable for day-to-day transactions."

— Yoav Dror, CEO of PumaPay, a blockchain payment solution.

Source: Yoav Vilner

Max Tsaryk, CEO of AskFM

"Big players from different markets — IBM, Starbucks, Telegram — have already expressed interest in blockchain and I believe that the overall the number of crypto users will grow by end 2019. However, a mass adoption will take much more, maybe 5-10 years. It depends on factors such as regulation, trust and acknowledgement."

— Max Tsaryk, CEO of askfm.io, a decentralized social media Q&A network

Yoav Vilner is a serial blogger, CEO and startup mentor. He has been featured on Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur and more. Follow him at @YoavVilner.

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