A lot of things are happening in the blockchain world. During 2022, spending on blockchain solutions by businesses is forecast to hit $11.7 billion. Here are some of the trends that will be driving this and some thoughts on how this will impact more and more lives over the course of the next year.

1. THE 5 BIGGEST BLOCKCHAIN
TRENDS IN 2022

2. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
THE 5 BIGGEST BLOCKCHAIN TRENDS IN 2022
A lot of things are happening in the blockchain world. During 2022,
spending on blockchain solutions by businesses is forecast to hit $11.7
billion. Here are some of the trends that will be driving this and some
thoughts on how this will impact more and more lives over the course
of the next year.

3. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Blockchain is one of the most exciting tech trends at the moment. It is a distributed,
encrypted database model that has the potential to solve many problems around online
trust and security. Many people know it as the technology that underpins Bitcoin and
cryptocurrencies in general. However, its potential uses are far broader, encompassing
digital “smart” contracts, logistics and supply chain provenance and security, and protection
against identity theft. There are countless others – blockchain evangelists say it can
potentially be used to improve security and integrity in any system that involves multiple
parties sharing access to a database.
During 2022, spending on blockchain solutions by businesses is forecast to hit $11.7 billion.
Here are some of the trends that will be driving this and some thoughts on how this will
impact more and more lives over the course of the next year.

4. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
TREND 1: GREEN BLOCKCHAIN INITIATIVES
Blockchains can potentially use a lot of energy and create high levels of carbon emissions – this
fact was behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s decision to temporarily stop accepting Bitcoin in payment
for his cars earlier in 2021. For this very good reason, during 2022, we are likely to see a great deal
of emphasis on attempts to “greenify” blockchain. There are a few ways this can be done,
including carbon offsetting, although many people consider that this often equates to simply
patching up a wound that shouldn’t have been caused in the first place. Another is by moving to
less energy-intensive models of blockchain technology – typically those that rely on “proof-of-
stake” algorithms rather than “proof-of-work” to generate consensus. Ethereum – the second
best-known blockchain after Bitcoin – plans to move to a POS model during 2022. Another route
to a greener operating model is the one championed by Cathy Wood, CEO of tech-focused hedge
fund Ark Invest. This posits the view that growing demand for energy will lead to greater
investments into generating renewable energy, which will then be used for other applications as
well as operating blockchains.

5. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
TREND 2: NFT EXPANDING BEYOND ONLINE ART
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) were the big news in the blockchain scene during 2021. Astronomical
prices achieved by artwork such as Beeple’s The First 5000 Days created plenty of headlines, placing
the concept of unique digital tokens residing on blockchains firmly in the public consciousness. It’s also
firmly taken hold in the music world, with artists including Kings of Leon, Shawn Mendes, and Grimes
all releasing tracks in NFT format. But like blockchain in general, the idea has potential beyond it’s first
publicity-grabbing use cases. Distillers William Grant and Son recently sold bottles of 46-year-old
Glenfiddich whisky alongside NFTs, which are used to prove each bottle’s provenance. NFTs in gaming
are starting to take off in a big way – monster-breeding game Axie Infinity allows players to "mint"
their own NFT creatures to send into battle and currently has around 300,000 concurrent players
(Fortnite, for comparison, has around 3.5 million). Dolce & Gabbana and Nike have both created
clothing and footwear that come with their own NFTs. And the metaverse concept – championed this
year by Facebook, Microsoft, and Nvidia – brings plenty of opportunities for innovative NFT use cases.

6. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
TREND 3: MORE COUNTRIES ADOPT BITCOIN AND
NATIONAL CRYPTOCURRENCIES
2021 saw El Salvador become among the first nations to adopt Bitcoin as legal
tender, meaning it can be accepted across the country to pay for goods and
services, and businesses can use it to pay their employees. According to many
commentators, during 2022, we will see a number of other countries follow suit.
Alexander Hoptner, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, predicts that at least
five developing countries will start to accept Bitcoin next year, driven by global
inflation and growing remittance fees from financial "middlemen" organizations
used to send money home by overseas workers.

7. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
National cryptocurrencies – where central banks create their own coins that they can control,
rather than adopting existing decentralized coins – are another area where we will see growth
in 2022. These projects typically involve digital currencies that will operate alongside existing
traditional currencies, allowing users to conduct their own transactions and manage their
custody without relying on third-party service providers, while also allowing the central banks
to keep control of the circulating supply – keeping the value of the token pegged to the value
of the country’s traditional currency. While the UK government-endorsed Britcoin is unlikely
to be ready for launch during 2022, others, including China, Singapore, Tunisia, and Ecuador,
have already done so, with more, including Japan, Russia, Sweden, and Estonia likely to join
soon.

8. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
TREND 4: BLOCKCHAIN AND IoT INTEGRATION
Blockchain is hugely compatible with the idea of the Internet of Things (IoT) because it is great for
creating records of interactions and transactions between machines. It can potentially help to solve
many problems around security as well as scalability due to the automated, encrypted, and immutable
nature of blockchain ledgers and databases. It could even be used for machine-to-machine transactions
– enabling micropayments to be made via cryptocurrencies when one machine or network needs to
procure services from another. While this is an advanced use case that may involve us traveling a little
further down the road before it impacts our day-to-day lives, it’s likely we will start to hear about more
pilot projects and initial use cases in this field during 2022. Innovation in this field is likely to be driven by
the ongoing rollout of 5G networks, meaning greater connectivity between all manner of smart,
networked equipment and appliances – not simply in terms of speed, but also new types of data
transactions including blockchain transactions.

9. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
TREND 5: BLOCKCHAIN IN VACCINE MANUFACTURE AND
TRACKING
It’s now clear that tackling the Covid-19 global pandemic will continue to be a
priority throughout 2022 and a key use case for many of this year's top tech
trends. Blockchain technology has several important potential use cases in vaccine
tracking and distribution. In a world where counterfeiters are known to be creating
and selling fake vaccines, blockchain means the authenticity of vaccine shipments
can be proven, and their distribution can be traced to ensure they are arriving at
their intended locations. There’s also a need to ensure integrity at every point of
the supply chain – for example, to ensure batches of vaccines are consistently
stored at the correct temperature, as is needed by many of them.

10. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
IBM has created a system to allow coordination between the many different and
varied agencies and healthcare authorities involved with vaccine distribution, using
blockchain to unify recording of vaccination rates and efficacy across the various
tools and platforms they all have in use. A pilot project also showed how blockchain
could potentially speed up the ability to recognize where a product recall might be
needed – for example, in a case where a batch seems to be causing an unusually
high occurrence of side-effects – from three days to just a few seconds.
Breakthroughs that come about due to the unprecedented response to this
pandemic are likely to go on to enable more use cases for blockchain technology in
the manufacture, distribution, and management of vaccinations in 2022.

11. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Read more about these and other future trends in my books, Business
Trends in Practice: The 25+ Trends That are Redefining Organizations and
Tech Trends In Practice: The 25 Technologies That Are Driving The 4th
Industrial Revolution.

12. © 2021 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker,
futurist, and a strategic business & technology advisor to governments and
companies. He helps organisations improve their business performance, use data
more intelligently, and understand the implications of new technologies such as
artificial intelligence, big data, blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is
a frequent contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for
Forbes. Every day Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers
and shares content that reaches millions of readers.

13. hello@bernardmarr.com
www.bernardmarr.com