The Future of Digital Assets with Orion - Part 2

The digital asset landscape is shifting quickly, spurred on by disruptive innovation and cross-pollination of platforms and technologies. Increasingly, digital assets on the blockchain are being deployed across consumer and business marketplaces to displace the traditional global financial system and interconnect disparate industries. 

In part one of this series, we examined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s guide to “Macrotrends and Disruptions Shaping 2020-2030.” This guide offered a sobering look at some of the concerns associated with growth and progress over the coming decade. 

For part two, we engage with ARK Invest’s Big Ideas 2022 report, which highlights transformative technologies to watch in the years to come. As ARK’s report shows, these technologies may be approaching tipping points towards explosive growth as innovation, demand, and lower costs all converge at once.

Using Orion Protocol’s decentralized crypto gateway, each digital asset emerging from the respective industries mentioned below is becoming accessible as the future of digital assets grows before our eyes. 

Who is Ark Invest?

ARK Invest is an investment management firm known for their innovative research approach in the analysis of emerging technologies and investments. While conventional fund management firms have been slow to adapt, ARK Invest recognizes the nature of exponential technological growth. 

ARK invests solely in disruptive innovations and focuses on stocks projected to double in value in the next five years.

Five Innovation Platforms of ARK’s 2022 Annual Research Report

According to ARK Invest, disruptive technologies are being built on the following five platforms:

- Artificial Intelligence

- Robotics

- Energy Storage

- DNA Sequencing

- Blockchain Technology

It is relevant to note that, not only are these significant emerging platforms for disruptive innovation, they are also converging together, accelerating in tandem to form new global markets.

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are tools automating our world. AI is associated with automating the tasks of knowledge workers. Robotics, on the other hand, is associated with automating labor that tends to be more physical.

SingularityNET (AGIX) is an example of a digital asset bringing AI to mainstream financial assets in an effort to “decentralize the creation and application of AI while progressively moving the world towards artificial general intelligence”.

AGIX is an example of a token in the industry of AI that can soon be available through Orion’s advanced suite of tools built on bottomless liquidity.

As noted by ARK, AI and robotics are also converging. For example, ARK states that (along with battery technology) AI and robotics are coming together to drastically reduce the cost structure of transportation.

Energy Storage, Renewable Energy, Bitcoin Mining, and Elon Musk

Battery Technology

ARK Invest has long been an investor in and supporter of Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors. While ARK’s report doesn’t reference Elon directly, they state that the rapidly falling costs of battery technology could lead to a “cambrian explosion” in the means for electric mobility. Indeed, Tesla is years ahead of the competition with their advancements in electric vehicle technology and production.

Musk, a thought-leader in renewable energies, has openly stated that battery storage is the bottleneck limiting the rate at which we can adopt renewable energy production. This is due to the fact that renewable energies, such as wind and solar, often waste energy when there is no wind or sun, respectively.

It is suggested that battery technology is advancing to prevent energy waste, and to increase the viability of renewable energy sources.

Renewables and Bitcoin mining

Referring to the intermittent nature of wind and solar energy production, ARK’s report points to a remarkable chart. It indicates that, as is, renewable energy can address up to 40% of the total addressable market, but that Bitcoin mining can incentivize power producers to use renewables to serve 100% of the grid’s energy needs.

ARK’s report suggests that Bitcoin mining is accelerating the world’s adoption of renewable energy.

Genomics (DNA Sequencing)

The ongoing global impacts of the COVID pandemic have served in kick-starting private sector research in cutting edge biological innovation. ARK points to gene therapy, in particular, as an area for prospective research and development spending growth, projecting a quadrupling in R&D funding in this field by 2026.

Gene editing

ARK’s report points to how breakthroughs in the world of gene editing have led to lower costs, faster results, and lower technical difficulty—which could lead to accelerated discovery in the field of medicine.

ARK’s research shows that CRISPR gene-editing technology, in particular, can address a significant number of diseases in comparison to previous gene editing methods, potentially leading to more personalized and accessible disease treatment.

A forward-thinking gene token

EncrypGen (DNA) is a token in the genomics industry moving to address the inevitable issue of access and ownership over one’s genomic data. Nowadays, it is commonly accepted that our personal medical records are accessible by governments and institutions. Using the blockchain, decentralized ownership and control over our personal genomic data can be a tool to preserve our right to privacy, and more.

The DNA token is another example of the blockchain connecting disparate industries with the application of digital assets. For any given asset across industries, access to liquidity and the associated tools through platforms like Orion are growing increasingly relevant.

Blockchain Technology: Bitcoin, DeFi, and Web3

ARK highlights the collaborative potential of public blockchains, and refers to Bitcoin as being the most significant deployment, to date, of the power of the decentralized, open-source nature of blockchain technology.

Financial inclusion

Bitcoin itself is a digital asset offering financial inclusion with asymmetric upside potential. We are already seeing Bitcoin lay the foundation for decentralized finance (DeFi), upending tradition financial institutions. On a global scale, access to a decentralized digital asset can offer financial stability for many who live in countries without a reliable financial infrastructure.

They also point out how both the DeFi and Web3 revolutions spun out of the innovations inherent to Bitcoin, pointing to a world of automated, distributed, and transparent monetary systems.

Revolutionizing money, finance, and the internet

Blockchain technology may be on its way to revolutionizing money and finance through decentralization, but also to revolutionizing the internet itself, paving the way for a Web3 landscape that is user-owned and interoperable. 

A word of caution

Though not mentioned in ARK’s report, it remains pertinent to remind users of the potential for blockchain technology to limit their freedoms. Any given state can do so through the application of their own central bank digital currency (CBDC). Though CBDCs may not be inherently hazardous, the line between them not being so is very fine.

Orion Connects you to the Future of Digital Assets

ARK Invest’s report

In their 2022 Big Ideas report, ARK shows how consumers are continuing to spend more of their time and resources online, offering boundless potential to those who offer responsible digital asset development across industries

Any given digital asset on the blockchain offers seamless forms of coordination across multiple disruptive industries. ARK’s report illustrates how crypto-powered digital assets may scale more efficiently than current financial infrastructure, fueling incredible growth in digital asset markets.

Orion Protocol

The fragmentation of each digital asset across groupings of exchanges is a stumbling block in the way of seamless integration of blockchain-based assets. Convergent growth of a digital asset across industries requires unifying tools that allow users to harness the power of blockchain-based innovation without needing access to a number of exchanges.

Orion has key priorities identified in what is needed for crypto to leap forward, offering a vision for a secure and seamless platform for users of every sort. Orion seeks to put them in the driver’s seat with decentralized access to nearly every digital asset across a wide range of centralized and decentralized markets.