Leading fintech media company ChainDD has recently taken advantage of the Chinese New Year, celebrated earlier this month, to invite various industry leaders to an interactive online program called “Who is the prophet?” in which they shared their thoughts on the future of the space.

During the program, the industry’s leaders were able to speak with the cryptocurrency community freely, and back up their future predictions with any piece of evidence they had. The topics discussed ranged between cryptocurrency market expectations and the future of blockchain technology this year.

ChainDD is set to hold on to the prediction made during the show – which is set to have various episodes – to revisit them next year and verify who’s going to be named “Prophet of the Year.”

Here are some of the predictions we saw during ChainDD’s event.

LD Capital Founder Lihua Yi

Lihua Yi, the founder of LD Capital, noted that this year he believes “blockchain technology will be more active in comparison to the second half of 2018.” He added:

Funds will experience polarization, meaning professional funds will improve while non-performing ones will be eliminated. The number of well formed funds will decrease by 90%.

Cryptocurrencies media outlets, he said, will suffer the same fate, as “no more than 20 media outlets” will “survive and be recognized by the market.”

Ultrain Co-Founder Rui Guo

Rui Guo, the co-founder of Ultrain, predicted “many new market segments will merge in the blockchain industry,” with some of them being the “commercial public chain and the traditional public chain.”

Out of these, he added, two or three are set to “help solve decentralizations and TPS [transaction per second] performance issues,” while operating publicly. Per his words some decentralized applications with innovative commercials models will appear, but it’s “too early for killer apps to emerge.”

Moreover, Guo predicted public blockchain “may be adopted in many industries, including new retails, logistics, medical care, games and energy and the financial industry.”

VeChain Founder Sunny Lu

Sunny Lu, the founder of VeChain, made his predictions on the development of the blockchain industry in the next ten years, starting with this one. Per Lu, the large-scale adoption of blockchain technology is “inevitable,” and “blockchain applications will be used in all aspects of all of our life.”

He added that blockchain applications will have to develop commercial value to be prosper and will have to be promoted by enterprises and professional teams in the cryptocurrency community. As adoption grows, he added, “more and more development will comply with the relevant regulations.”

QTUM Founder Chu Shuai

Shuai seemingly offered a more conservative approach. After noting 2019 is still early for the commercialization of blockchain technology, he claimed there “will be some breakthroughs in some areas, such as the content of financial applications, games and digitalization applications.” Large scale commercialization will take three to five years, he said.

As for this year, QTUM’s founder stated, noting it shouldn’t be taken as investment advice:

The industry development in 2019 will be relatively calm. At the end of 2019, the industry digital assets will hopefully reach 200 billion USD again. On December 31, 2019, price of BTC should be somewhere between 4,500 and 5,000 USD.”

Shuai added that this year, we’ll see layer-two scaling solutions like Bitcoin’s Lightning Network – which recently saw its ‘torch’ reach Fidelity Digital Assets – mature. We’ll also see the “revival of privacy technologies,” and stronger “interactivity and improved ease of use,” he said.

Consensus Lab Partner Zheng Ren

According to Consensus Lab partner Zheng Ren, investments in the blockchain space will “choose paths” with “80% of the token funds” either transforming or disappearing. Those who survive will be the “more professional investment institutions with more comprehensive businesses.”

Bitcoin’s price, Ren added, will fluctuate between the $3,000 and $6,000 marks, as over-the-counter trading desks, cryptocurrency loans, and more will keep on rising. Dapps with a strong community will be the ones thriving in the space.

Finally, he added more countries will enforce regulations, and that the “re-establishment of security token offerings (STOs)” will need time.

Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management Ph.D. Supervisor Mei Luo

Mei Luo, a Ph.D. Supervisor at the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management revealed she believes this year will see academic research of the crypto space thrive, with the “explosive research results” being shown next year.

Per Luo, cryptocurrency courses will emerge in business schools in China, Hong Kong, and the US, at about the same time a secondary market of cryptocurrency trends emerges, reducing arbitrage opportunities.

Market participants, she concluded, will be more rational this year, and BTC’s price will move between the $3,000 and $6,000 marks.

Earlier this year, ChainDD launched its new market-insight focused cryptocurrency wallet.