2026 - 2028
- Tokenized cash and treasuries become everyday collateral in wholesale workflows.
- Agent payments and associated agent identity methods show up in institutional banking.
- Hyperscale data centers use mostly diesel fuel but invest in portable nuclear.
- The first floating seawater cooled data centers deploy for testing. (Probably using Starlink for communications and standard cruise liner fuel but with designs in the works for nuclear versions)
- Physical AI (autonomous robots and other equipment) is seen in warehouses, manufacturing and a few neighborhoods but not in your home.
- Decentralized compute starts building a significant capacity.
- PQC encryption concepts are rolled out in larger experiments but are put on hold by most companies in favor of Post-AI security efforts.
- Autonomous cybersecurity is solved only after major hacks and losses that reshape who the major players are across industries.
- Fusion remains an experiment but AI accelerates its development.
- Financial Institutions are the main customer for blockchain and crypto
2028 - 2032
- Agents transact 10x more frequently on decentralized and centralized systems than humans do (whether anyone can tell the difference or not).
- Small to Medium Nuclear Reactors start deploying to select locations (likely hyperscale data centers and military bases).
- Nuclear floating data centers see larger scale deployment.
- Physical AI takes larger roles across dangerous jobs like oil rigs and robots become a real lien item in business budgets where repetitive physical labor matters.
- Consumer robotics stays in the yard while people get used to seeing humanoid robots in public (and do not want them in their houses yet)
- Cryptography add-ons or changeouts become the new Y2K but will be important to do as AI closes in on breaking encryption via better algorithms (not brute force).
- Decentralized compute starts to find customers.
- Decentralized manufacturing starts to peak the interest of early adopters with prototypes making headlines.
- Industry adopts blockchain and crypto for data provenance and cheaper tracking
2032 - 2036
- Data centers all have their own colocated nuclear power sources, as do most large military and corporate campuses.
- Agents are counterparties in wholesale financial markets, quoting, hedging and moving collateral but under policies that people still own and oversee.
- Quantum compute is finding some advantage in simulation and data intensive domains but its not yet relevant in most enterprise software.
- Decentralization of manufacturing starts to break out across neighborhoods.
- Consumer adoption of crypto and decentralized systems happens here.
Some Of These Predictions Are Wrong If…
- Nuclear energy finds regulatory enemies due to a large scale disaster or simply politics. (That would not preclude floating nuclear powered data centers)
- AI demand dissipates (maybe because the agents destroyed the existing systems to the point that people won’t touch them anymore - terminator scenario).
- Consumer-owned agents adopt crypto faster than institutions (then my order was wrong and instead of Institutions > Industry > Consumer, it will look like Consumer > Institutions > Industry).
- Cryptographically relevant quantum is ready much later than expected (then we are early, which is better than being late).
- Repatriating raw materials production fails (in which case rising costs could delay chip development or push it offshore)
If everything goes wrong that can go wrong, these developments simply move elsewhere in the world. There is a particular inevitability about this stack of technologies and where it is going.