Companies to watch if you’re invested in paying with cryptocurrency

Like many people, I was skeptical of cryptocurrency at first, until I began reading about it from objective sources and realized that it’s not just a fad, but rather, something that any well-rounded investor should include in their portfolio. After all, money doesn’t actually exist, right? It’s moved by 1s and 0s from “place” to another ephemeral place, as I see fit.

After dipping a toe a few years ago into the bitcoin pool and being quickly rewarded, I began looking into other cryptocurrencies.

And with the growth in major companies who now accept bitcoin as payment, I began paying my mobile phone bill, ordering takeaway, and paying for my gym membership via bitcoin. It was the wave of the future, happening now.

Ever since this initial foray, I’ve kept a keen eye on the ever-expanding list of organizations joining the crypto craze. The latest, AMC Theaters, has made insane money moves this year, earning investors a 2,144% increase in just six months. As many have pointed out, you couldn’t invest in Tesla, Apple, or Microsoft and see those gains. Part of this is attributed to the Reddit crowd’s “stonks” craze (remember when they saved Game Stop?). And it’s also due in part to AMC CEO Adam Aron’s pledge that the company will accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Bitcoin Cash by the end of the year.

A man of the people and a bit of a cryptocurrency fan fave, Aron first wasn’t interested in Dogecoin, but after putting a poll out on Twitter in December, he decided to put it on the list. While, in the era of streaming at home, plus the pandemic, a movie theater chain might not seem a solid bet. However, AMC has worked hard to position itself as a digital leader in entertainment and that hard work has paid off. If the company can continue paying down its debts and stay in the public eye as the movie studios begin to produce again, Aron’s clever positioning will help not just the company, but the future of cryptocurrencies.

Because of Aron’s reputation as a businessman, particularly au fait at helping turn struggling industries around, the weight lent to the crypto market by his faith in it is extremely helpful.

And now we come full circle back to the investment opportunities that crypto represents and while many of us know that it’s the future of money, it’s still causing a lot of people to hesitate – particularly those who don’t know technology. With banks proving their own lack of safety and security in the very recent past, it would seem a no-brainer for the bandwagon to be full as it left the station. Yet the fact remains that people simply don’t understand the technology behind crypto, which means that security is a chief concern.

So, what do we need to have a fully secure crypto market?

While we Bit-and-Doge-and-Litecoin lovers know that the currency itself is secure, those with security worries aren’t entirely wrong – the not-so-distant future threat of quantum computers is a major concern for those on the cybersecurity side of things. Most current encryption techniques are sufficient for the technology we have now, despite being developed in the 1970s. But within the next five-to-10 years, they’ll be rendered immediately obsolete by quantum computers’ ability to decrypt even the most complex AES or RSA encryption. And that means that switched on crypto lovers will be not just keeping an eye on the next company to accept the currency, but also on cybersecurity organizations working to develop defenses against the quantum threat.

One such company is London-based Arqit Quantum, Inc., which, for the past few years, has been stepping further and further into the spotlight with its cloud-based answer to current encryption inefficiencies. The real juicy nugget of info is that its solution, QuantumCloud, was developed specifically with blockchain protection in mind – and it protects against the decryption threat of quantum computers. While worrying about future technology risks may sound like a waste of brain space for cryptocurrency fans, many experts are actually predicting security risks from these incredible machines as early as 2023.

But, you don’t have to take my word for it: read on here to see what Arqit and its team of former British intelligence staffers are doing for data security.

With future-proofed security structures in place, I’m really hoping the public perception of crypto changes, and quickly. After all, we really can’t afford another bank bailout.