The bitcoin cryptocurrency disappointed many investors before the end of 2017 when it lost nearly 70% of its value right after reaching a peak of US$20,000. A more promising story, though not as dramatic, seems to reside in blockchain, the underlying and much larger technology driving the bitcoin juggernaut.
Blockchain is destined to find its way into many more applications and businesses, from securities trading in finance and account processing in banking, to component-tracking inside industrial supply chains, and energy contracts between utility companies.
"It has a great potential to displace and disrupt; some announce it as the second coming of the Internet, offering similar opportunities," says Raj Lala, president and CEO of Evolve Funds Group Inc. in Toronto, which on March 6 will launch Evolve Blockchain, an exchange-traded fund listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol LINK.