Looking ahead to what we can expect by the new decade’s end, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz predicts that Bitcoin (BTC) is likely to be central to the monetization mechanisms that future online influencers will use.

In its Dec. 30 vignette of a highly automated future — where food is tailored to an individual’s microbiome and lifestyle in a “roboticized kitchen,” and VR and avatars are part and parcel of everyday business workflows — Andreessen Horowitz writes that by 2030:

“The influencer can reach hundreds of her fans instantaneously. In turn, the fans can get paid instantly for giving this feedback. They can choose to get paid in a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Libra, or they can choose to get paid in Influencer Coin.”

Andreessen Horowitz sees the role of private digital assets like its hypothetical “Influencer Coin” as being a way for online fans to secure a stake in an influencer’s rising popularity — similar to the way start-up employees participate in their startups’ growth through equity.

Strategic trends in the roaring 20s

In a less literary take on strategic technology trends for the new decade — yet one that overlaps significantly with Andreessen Horowitz in its overall vision — ComputerWeekly.com has identified blockchain, hyper-automation and artificial intelligence security as the key drivers of change.

“In the future, true blockchain or ‘blockchain complete’ will have the potential to transform industries,” ComputerWeekly contributor Brian Burke wrote on Jan. 2, further predicting that the technology will be “fully scalable by 2023.”

Blockchain together with complementary technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) will expand the type of participants in decentralized and automated networks, Burke notes.

In the automotive industry, a smart sensor-equipped car could be able to negotiate insurance prices directly and automatically with an insurer using blockchain and IoT, for example.

More broadly, the report points to data privacy measures, increasingly democratized technology and distributed cloud computing as key parallel trends to blockchain in the coming decade.

“Dark” times

On the cusp of the new year, ZenGo wallet CEO Ouriel Ohayon tweeted his “joke-mode” 2020 predictions. Swerving between the mock-apocalyptic and the sarcastic, he wrote: