Matthew LeMerle is the Managing Partner of Fifth Era and Keiretsu Capital, who combined are the most active early stage venture investors backing almost 200 companies a year. Matthew is also the co-founder and managing partner of Blockchain Coinvestors, who are investing in the leading blockchain venture partnerships.
In December 2019, Matthew featured on a Blockchain Coinvestors webinar where he walked through his ten predictions on blockchain for 2020. The ongoing conflation of 'enterprise blockchain' and 'blockchain-inspired' developments for corporates and institutions, with the merits of the original bitcoin blockchain and the 'crypto-first' mentality, means that a lot of discussions on blockchain can get as excitable as a dog in a butcher shop. What we've found is that the substitution of the word "blockchain" with "blockchain-inspired" tends to unite competing views on the role of distributed ledger technologies in replacing the world's financial infrastructure. In this episode, we talk about both crypto-first topics as well as enterprise blockchain, as both are playing a role in the continued digitalization of financial markets and money.
Given the length of the discussion between Matthew and Pete, we split this feature into two parts, with Part I covering Matthew's first six predictions, along with Pete's reflections on each one. This episode covers Matthew's final four predictions, which are #7-10 in the list below:
G7 / EU nations will announce digital monies
Developing nations will embrace bitcoin
Banks will offer crypto access and custody
Hybrid wallets will become available everywhere
Asset players first deploy blockchain in back offices
No ETFs….indexes and funds will gather assets fast
Pro traders will embrace sophisticated exchanges
Enterprises will utilize hybrid blockchains
More than [another] 5 blockchain unicorns will emerge
Highest returns will still come from early stage (acknowledged by Matthew as more of a fact than a prediction!)
Originally published as the shownotes for MoneyNeverSleeps episode 72 on 24 January 2020.
