5 Emerging Industries of the Future
Marty McFly and Doc took their ultimate time machine, the beautiful DMC DeLorean to see how things would play out in the future. It’s time we board alongside them to see how revolutionary these next few decades will be due to these emerging industries. This ride will be a smooth one, as our powerful time machine DeLorean is now an EV.
- Blockchain
David Chaum was proposing the idea of digital money in the mid-80s and went on to create a company called DigiCash in 1989. DigiCash transactions were unique in that they were anonymous due to a number of cryptographic protocols integrated within its development ensuring user anonymity. However, a bank was still needed for DigiCash to properly operate. Fast forward to 2008, when a whitepaper was published by Satoshi Nakamoto detailing the advent of a digital currency now known as Bitcoin. No one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is to this day, many speculate it may be a group of people or an intelligence agency such as the CIA. Nakamoto created bitcoin as a decentralized currency that could be sent between individuals without the need for any third-party company. Bitcoin runs on a blockchain network that is constantly updating transaction history on a ledger. Blockchain technology is defined simply as a list of transactions that can be verified and viewed by anyone.
This technology is changing the world through its disruptive nature and has the power to change how industries of all sorts operate. One example is the medical system which has been archaic in the way it manages data collection and storage of patient information. Blockchain has the power to revolutionize the way hospitals communicate patient data with each other, or doctors do to patients. Most cryptocurrencies operate through blockchain networks and are continuously being created to tackle issues from walks of the corporate, social, and global levels. The main cryptocurrency is Bitcoin as it was the first to lay down the ground for all other coins to rise, it is seen as digital gold and is limited to only a supply of 21 million. This limited supply will demonstrate to be an effective method in restricting inflation, which sadly will reach all-time highs due to the federal printing of pandemic relief funds. Besides providing individuals with the opportunity to become crypto millionaires, blockchain is providing individuals with tools to streamline data with efficiency and decentralize existing systems. It will change the world as we know it and will be adopted worldwide within a few years, give it a decade or two and crypto will be king. This time period is reminiscent of the dot-com bubble of the late ’90s. I recommend that you be wise in the projects you choose to invest in and always research with due diligence.
2) Electric Vehicles (EV)
Electric vehicles are providing a cost-effective alternative, environmentally friendly, and futuristic approach to the automotive industry. States are incentivizing consumers to transition into EV’s and automotive giants are transitioning into the EV market, leaving behind the traditional combustion engine. Many argue that combustion engines require more maintenance, however, the hit goes to those who maintain such engines such as mechanics, as they have to move into other industries. States such as California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts have mandated that only electric vehicles will be sold by 2035. EV’s do have a lot of work to do in terms of ensuring the production of clean emissions, increased range capacity, longevity, and price reduction. To have the EV market reach a global scale, the infrastructure must be set in place to ensure EV’s can run in nations of all continents. The market for EV’s is over $160 billion currently, and this will continuously rise as innovations within the space continue to happen.
Now is also a great time to start investing in specific EV companies, as they are changing the way our vehicles operate and how the world travels. Expect EV to take over not only the automotive industry but also the aviation space as many companies such as on Nov 5, 2020, New Zealand took delivery of its first electric plane. The EV space is surmounting to be an exciting staple in our life as it is providing sustainability for our planet and innovation for our societies. Toyota released its first-ever hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle, Toyota’s Mirai, which featured our beloved duo of Marty McFly and Doc Brown sponsoring the product, showing how truly we are going back to the future.
3. E-Learning
E-Learning is a $190 billion dollar industry. It was COVID 19 which brought everyone behind the computer screen from CEO’s to kids in preschool, changing the dynamics of learning and interaction. Online education skyrocketed once the pandemic hit and forced us to integrate with new ways. As a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, I was learning online for nearly two semesters as the pandemic started at the beginning of my senior year. It showed me how vital it is to ensure the optimization and efficiency of learning in absence of a physical teacher, sure they are there over on the screen, but the feeling is different. Nonetheless, the experience worked out and became manageable, proving that online learning would now be the way to the future. It is capable of opening doors for people all around the world, who might not have access to educational resources or be in a financial situation that limits their capacity to study. Online learning was already booming with things like Khan Academy, Youtube tutorials, but now it has taken a whole new edge due to the potential Viruses which will continue to loom in the years to come, stopping any way of conducting in-person classes. Until the world returns back to a physically connected realm, we will now have to adapt to the digital one in all forms, not just our social media. It is a great time to start investing in online education platforms because they are now in more demand than ever and due to people being confined to their four walls, they have more access and time to pursue what they wish to in the world of academia. E-Learning changes traditional educational norms in its ability to gamify the gain of knowledge and immersive modularity. There are platforms that have been cultivating their footing in this space for years now and their stocks are rocketing, such as Chegg which went from $40.00 before the pandemic to $100 today, on January 14, 2021.
4) AI & Robotics
Seeing Sofia the robot creeped us all out, but she is here to stay as she was granted citizenship to Saudi Arabia. The Abaya may be a good look on her. All things being said, Artificial intelligence has a foothold in nearly every industry and is impacting all of us. Combined with Big data and IoT, AI has revolutionized how industries operate and have brought great efficiency of all sorts. I would highly recommend adding these fields to your portfolios as they will generate profit, take time to research what you feel is right, and add it right in. AI may be stealing our jobs, but we have the power to invest in it, generate wealth, and not have to work a job at all, so it can happily take any positions away. Albeit; from a societal standpoint, AI and robotics definitely have negativity as they have the power to evade our privacy, infringe on our rights, and create a dystopian world, and those are all things that must be considered. The future must lie in the hands of people, not robots, and we must innerstand that people cannot rely on a programmed entity to make our decisions, this is something which must be monitored with care as the fate of our planet rests on it. We cannot risk having IRobot happen to us in real life, and by the looks of it, it is not a far fetched reality. It's a possibility that man might merge with artificial intelligence one day in hopes of creating the perfect being, something which would be very foolish because it would rob human beings of their own potential stored within the confines of their soul, exceeding the power of any microchip.
5) E-Sports
Gaming is a billion-dollar industry and is something that has a stronghold throughout the globe, it connects people from different backgrounds and builds everlasting relationships in some instances. Two people met on the MMORPG Runescape and got married, and they weren’t the only ones, showing us the power that gaming platforms carry. E-sports is the next wave of that and already is a multi-billion dollar industry in its own right, having over 400 million people tune in to watch E-Sports every single year. With the Pandemic, these numbers have grown tremendously as lockdowns have given people more time and less freedom, meaning turning to outlets such as online gaming competitions and so forth. Gamers fantasize about being the characters they are playing, if you play NBA 2K and watch Kevin Durant pull up for that jumper, you wish you could be doing on the court yourself in front of thousands of fans, however, E-Sports has brought that reality to an online existence, as there are thousands of professional E-Sports players who take part in online competition based leagues for incentives and prizes. Twitch, one of the early adopters of gaming streaming, adopted a whole category just for E-sports in mid-2020, and this is just the beginning. We were already confined to being home before the pandemic due to things like Netflix, Social Media, and more, but now with the virus out there looming, it seems like people have an actual excuse to not leave their homes. This trend will have the younger up and coming generation succumb to the online realities and focus more on things like E-Sports, making for this to be, at least a 50 billion dollar industry by 2035. I would definitely recommend adding E-Sports stocks. The stocks to add would be of companies who produce the videos which garner large audiences in E-sports events, such as Activizion Blizzard which makes Call of Duty or Overwatch, or Tencent Holdings which is responsible for the megahit League of Legends.
It was fun seeing the future with you Marty McFly and Doc, now its time to go back into the present, where we are amidst a pandemic, with conditions only getting worse due to mutations of Coronavirus, maybe you can take us to the timeline when this thing is finally over.
Ultimately, it is essential to have a vision for what's to come and hold expectations of the foreseeable future, in the pursuit of maximizing investment opportunities and aligning with trends to be one step ahead of the curve.
“One who often thinks and reflects develops his foresight and vision.”-Imam Ali (A.S.)
