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Nowadays we all have heard before about 5G and how revolutionary this technology will be for our lives, but many people have not really understood the impact of this technology on their professional and everyday lives. To begin with, 5G is the fifth generation mobile network that runs in the same frequencies we are using now on our smartphones and is 100 times faster than 4G. No company or organizations control it, but instead there are several companies that have contributed to inventing funtamental technologies that made 5G the next wireless standard. Well established 5G networks will provide new opportunities, enabling companies to deliver groundbreaking solutions in areas such as AR, VR and IoT technologies. Also, 5G will lead us closer to smart cities, where the lives of people will be transformed due to higher connectivity between people and devices, higher data processing speed and low latency in areas such as entertainment, driving safety and health care. 5G is going to have a great impact on the global economy too since studies indicate that it will increase the total economic output by 13.1 trillion dollars and will create 22.8 million new jobs(Qualcomm, 2021).

Analysts have observed that almost 55 percent of our mobile internet traffic occurs from video streaming. This demand for high quality video streaming will definitely increase even more in the future. Entertainment industry will benefit from 5G since streaming 4K  videos of best quality will only take milliseconds and live streaming events will be broadcasted to mobiles without any interruptions. Furthermore, VR games are getting very popular and more and more companies are investing in them. High speed and low latency is a must for these games, thus 5G seems to be a perfect fit.

Internet of things and its broad spectrum of applications is another area that 5G networks will revotionalize. IoT will connect every device on the Internet, collecting huge amounts of data that will require to be collected, transferred and analyzed in real time speed. 5G is the most efficient solution for IoT technologies because of its flexibility and low cost solutions. Iot will provide solutions with the usage of 5G networks in areas such as smart homes, logistics and shipping, smart cities, industrial IoT, smart farming, fleet management, healthcare, autonomous driving, drone operation, security and surveillance. Even though 5G is not something new we forget that it is an integral component for every other technological advancement. After all, can you think of something more disruptive that 5G?

References:

What is 5G? (2021, May 13). Qualcomm. https://www.qualcomm.com/5g/what-is-5g

5G network and technology for business growth. (2021). Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson. https://www.ericsson.com/en/5g/5g-networks

R. (2021, August 24). Applications of 5G technology. RF Page. https://www.rfpage.com/applications-5g-technology/

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Blockchain and digital currencies are disrupting the world as we know. This has caught the attention of many entrepreneurs that are seeking to exploit this opportunity. Cryptocurrency projects pop up every day as more and more people understand their innovative applications. Many compare blockchain technology with internet in mid-90s stating that whoever fails to understand its capabilities will be left behind (Frey, 2021).

An innovation that is based on blockchain and digital currencies is NFTs. Lately there is a big fuse around NFTs and their application since $174 million have been invested in NFT purchases (Conti, 2021). To give a high-level description, NFTs are digital non-fungible tokens that are part of Ethereum blockchain.  The term non-fungible basically means that each token is unique and recognizable. For example, a coin is fungible whereas a one-of-a-kind card from a rare collection is non-fungible.

NFTs as of now are basically used to secure ownership of digital assets, which as we know can be replicated easily. Mostly they are used to sell digital art such as music, all kinds of digital artwork and items in gaming industry. In order to prove authenticity digital work is assigned with a number which is stored in a token as part of the blockchain. The token as part of the consensus that blockchain offers, proves the authenticity and the ownership of the asset and it can be passed or sold.  To better understand the size of the market you can observe the accumulated sales during the month of February in the image below.

But NFT’s applications are not restricted only to the digital world. They can be connected to represent ownership to physical items too. An appropriate industry that could use NFT capabilities is real estate. Apartment owners could issue NFTs, which represent fractions of their property and then sell them to investors. By this, fractional ownership is achieved, and investors can gain income from rent or potential sale. Investors can also use their unique tokens to exchange fractional ownership in markets without the need of intermediaries. But when dealing with innovative technology there are some potential risks that should be considered. Even though NFTs can provide some additional fund flows in real estate they create problems regarding the ownership of the property. If someone has enough proportion of a property can, he actual have the final say and force the previous homeowner to sell it? This could be very stressful and unacceptable for those living in the property.  In contrast if investors have acquired the property could occupants continue to live there indefinitely?

As we understand NFT in real estate business must work with different legal and practical issues before it is mass adopted by the industry. Although full adoption seems to be far away we should be vigilant and take advantage all the opportunities this new technology haw to offer.

References

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/nft-non-fungible-token

https://www.theverge.com/22310188/nft-explainer-what-is-blockchain-crypto-art-faq