The growing use of blockchain technology in financial services will include a healthy dose of artificial intelligence, as new, automated analytic techniques look for patterns in the "relationship data" about people, contracts and transactions. That merger of these two hot tech trends is one of the predictions made by Dr. Scott Zoldi, chief analytics officer at Silicon Valley analytic software firm FICO, and a recognised expert in the field of artificial intelligence. "Beyond its association with cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology will soon record'time chains of events,' as applied to contracts, interactions and occurrences," Dr. Zoldi wrote on the FICO Blog. "Think about renting a car. In the future, you will be able walk up to a car to lease it, but you'll do so with a micro-loan for which you are approved to lease the car for, say, an afternoon. This micro-loan will have insurance contracts attached to the blockchain, and a codified history of the car's history of drivers, events, and maintenance. As you drive through the city and interact with toll roads and parking spaces, all of this information will be automatically recorded and monitored on the blockchain. When you leave the car and lock it, the lease is complete and auditable on the chain. These kinds of data event chains will create new opportunities for graph analytics and novel new AI algorithms to consume relationship data at scale."

Jalak Jobanputra is founder and managing partner of Future\Perfect Ventures, an early-stage venture fund investing in decentralization and digital assets. The following article is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk's 2017 in Review. But what's even more exciting to many of us who have been investing in the sector for the past several years is the development of the underlying technology. Blockchain technology, which powers most cryptocurrencies, is in nascent stages. This past year, we started seeing some early proof points of how this new infrastructure can be used, including the announcement by the Australian Securities Exchange that it would replace its current post-trade settlement process with a blockchain system, after running both concurrently.

Technology is filled with buzzwords that come and go. However, three key ideas that have grown in stature and relevance over recent years are blockchain technology, artificial intelligence and the internet of things. These three emerging technologies represent different aspects of the data world, and 2018 may be the tipping point in their convergence. Three different pieces of technology will start working together in a seamless ecosystem, and the result is a more connected, more efficient and more secure world. The Internet of Things (IoT) world may be exciting, but there are serious technical challenges that need to be addressed, especially by developers.