Forecasting the future: 10 financial events that will occur by 2025

I believe that forecasting the future is difficult, but not impossible.

The easiest way to distinguish between a wise teacher and a fool is to listen to them and compare their claims with actual events in the real world. Is what they said consistent with what actually happened?

We should only make a claim if we are truly knowledgeable about something, and what better way to test our knowledge by making specific predictions of the future - and admitting our mistakes if our predictions turned out to be incorrect?

So, here are my ten predictions for the year 2025:

1. The most widely used cryptocurrency for electronic payments worldwide will not be Bitcoin, but Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum.

2. The top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization will include (in no particular order): Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Tezos, and Dash.

3. Litecoin and Ripple, currently among the top 10, will unfortunately prove to be a great disappointment to their holders. Anyone owning these coins should sell now or lose everything by 2025.

4. Negative interest rates will prevail and be adopted by major central banks around the world including the U.S. Federal Reserve.

5. The Euro, if it still exists, will fall below parity against the U.S. Dollar.

6. Gold, now trading at $1700, will cost more than $5000 per ounce as gold mining stocks become the best performing asset (after cryptocurrencies)

7. By 2025, some of the biggest banks in the world including Banco Santander, HSBC, and Deutsche Bank will face bankruptcy unless bailed out by the government.

8. Wirecard, a German Fintech accused of accounting fraud, will see its share price decline by more than 90% from today's price.

9. The shares of Cisco, AMD, Intel, and Netapp will be trading above $100 and Biogen's bull run will bring it above $1000.

10. By 2025, Xiaomi will become the world's largest smartphone manufacturer after taking over Apple, Huawei, and Samsung.

Bonus prediction:

11. By 2025, the price of Silver will soar to an all time high above $50 per ounce.

Note to self: I would like to come back to this post in 5 years and see which of my predictions turned out to be correct. More importantly, I would like to look at my incorrect predictions and ask myself : What can I do or learn, to make future predictions more accurate?