Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?

* 1 Bitcoin will cost over $100k on Dec 31, 2021

* An animation tool rivaling Adobe Flash for the web will emerge

* FB releases a thin virtual reality headset https://research.fb.com/blog/2020/06/holographic-optics-for-...

* Austin Tx or Seattle Wa succeeds Silicon Valley as the next major tech hub. San Francisco and its century old Victorians become the Detroit of the tech world

* Section 230 doesn't get repealed

* WFH and quarantine continues until the summer

* A React competitor that compiles to WASM with promises of perf and space gains will emerge

* A Reddit competitor emerges and wins majority marketshare

* 2021 will be the year of punk and rock n' roll

Count me in! That would definitely make this year happy for me.

Indeed and it’s already here https://gif.com.ai

* Remote work will stay mainstream in tech, with most employees working at least a few days remote per month

* HN will get a dark mode

(I just checked on the latter and apparently it's scheduled to be released on the 23rd of January, so I guess that's pretty solid at this point. You never know, though; last attempt at release was postponed due to Covid, and it could happen again. If we're really lucky there'll be a US release in 2021.)

New law enforcement techniques using DNS and other Intel techniques will be used to track, seize and tax cryptocurrency - which will cause increased popularity of Ethereum.

A qubit will travel around the world without decohering and increase attention on quantum internet investments. GPT4 and other ML models (maybe even with a neuro-feedback loop) will radically change entertainment for Gaming, movies, books, and music.

Smart Cities will start emerging ( and some cities which will ban the technology) with ML models and Intel systems capable of identifying all kinds of hazards (fires), threats (terrorists) and crime at scale.

A new “shadow net” will emerge from new mesh-networking protocols and massive amounts of compromised IoT devices- allowing users to bypass core internet routers and ISPs with the “shadow net”

XR with depth field scanning and smart tailoring with drastically change the fashion industry ( shoes and clothes). So people can virtually try on clothes and order perfectly tailored clothes from their home.

A bit different from your example, but a small group of us started a "Bill of Models" project for our department. We spent too much time failing to manage complexity with fancy tools. We ended up writing our own simple tool for reading custom BOMs to create and manage simulations.

DNS? Not sure how that's relavent. And furthermore why would a crack down lead to more popularity?

> A qubit will travel around the world without decohering and increase attention on quantum internet investments

Well that would be good for researchers, there are basically 0 applications so i'm not sure why it would generate imvestment excitement (who needs QKD when you have public-key crypto?)

Virtually trying on clothes would be cool but I don't think there's any way you could get actual tailoring, but maybe adding a few intermediate sizes from the standard s m l?

My prediction for fashion change would be more towards ideas like NTWRK. I hate the false scarcity 'drops' trend, but doing a cool digital launch experience is fun and chunking out a season like Jacquemus seems to build anticipation.

https://qz.com/quartzy/1539036/the-zozosuit-has-been-an-expe...

cmd-f 'virus': 0 results

Predictions are hard

Wonder if there are any companies I can invest in to cash in on this?

Unlikely. Biden once said to putin directly that "he had no soul".

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-biden-idUSKBN0...

> "I said, 'Mr. Prime Minister, I'm looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul,'" Biden told the magazine. "He looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, 'We understand one another.'"

The source is Joe Biden. There is absolutely no way that actually went down as he described it.

* Boris Johnson will resign

* Tiktok becomes the most popular social media platform

* Japan Olympics go ahead causing hundreds of deaths

* Covid eventually fizzles out

More no code platforms will emerge and grow

Fiat currencies will have major moves

Bitcoin will rise big and then drop sharply once people realize how useless it is

Inequality will continue to grow. More controls will be put in place to keep disadvantaged in line. Surveillance, social controls, brainwashing

Real estate will have volatility

or when the liquidity catches up to the prices on exchanges, like every bitcoin rally ever and people keep building on it regardless? it isn't controversial for commodities to have cyclical trading patterns.

There is no change in monetary policy globally, and every country injected even more printed money into the system for Covid relief. 2021 should see new all time highs across all equities, particularly tech.

>Bitcoin

Crypto will have a meteoric run up until the Coinbase IPO in February, and then people will take their profits, but I expect it to rise with the rest of the economy by the end of the year again. Overall, everyone should be buying the major dips on crypto until 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics when China is expected to do a roll-out of their digital currency. I don’t recall if it’s exactly blockchain based, but it’s a sentiment booster for digital cashless economy and should boost the general crypto market.

I personally don’t over think this one, just buy/sell the trends on this stuff. If you bought 1btc at 3kish, you are sitting on 24k. Didn’t we all know Bitcoin wasn’t going to stay at 3k? This will be a never ending cycle and will be our generations Gold (what makes that go up or down now days is anybody’s guess, but the sentiment cycle is real on this stuff and it’s best to surf the trends).

>Inequality

Most likely due to economic growth. In the shuffle, the working class doesn’t get it’s fair share of the pie.

————————————-

I’ll add five:

1. Tesla really benefited from government subsidies for energy efficient vehicles. I expect the Biden administration, and the Democrats to push hard for “Green” subsidies across the board. Don’t be surprised if suddenly the new meme startup pitch shifts from blockchain over to “green”. Buy anything selling solar, electric vehicles, etc.

2. Restaurants come back different in a leaner way. Smaller locations, delivery first, little to no dine-in. Think more food trucks. Suddenly that mobile robotic pizza truck SoftBank invested in might not sound so insane. What was insane was an entire industry unable to survive because of people and real-estate costs. Not so wild to consider location-less/people-less alternative.

3. If Democrats win the run-off next week and take Congress, marijuana will get federally legalized.

4. Covid annihilated companies will merge or get acquired in 2021. They won’t be given a chance to rebound, but instead be snapped up at the first sign of an uptrend.

5. Online learning platforms will become enterprise grade platforms leveraged by school systems. I expect to see 10x more companies building a Blackboard alternative for k-12, as school districts will look negligent for not investing in one to facilitate remote learning. This should become a huge space. Would not be shocked if Biden/Democrats subsidize the initiative via an expansion of erate:

https://www.fcc.gov/general/e-rate-schools-libraries-usf-pro...

As a vaccine roles out, one would expect these online services to die back down again to roughly where they were, if a little elevated due to some good exposure.

> Fiat currencies will have major moves

I see a few large movers now trying to push micro-transactions which could be interesting. I know for example China are pushing Alipay very hard.

> Bitcoin will rise big and then drop sharply once people realize how useless it is

I think of Bitcoin essentially as a pyramid scheme, it has zero real world value. I think banks made a major mistake in trading in it.

I always thought it would be more interesting (if not more illegal) if it was used for solving computationally hard problems, where people post bounties for their completion and it can be proved the computation was done correctly. For example cracking a strong key pair or website certificate, or doing some computation for research like protein folding.

> Inequality will continue to grow. More controls will be put in place to keep disadvantaged in line. Surveillance, social controls, brainwashing

See the point about micro-transactions. Cash-in-hand agreements grease the palms of the working man, if they can make that digital then they can tax it.

> Real estate will have volatility

After the protests/riots in the US and the COVID situation in all major cities, I think many people are looking to move out to more rural areas. In New York I hear the markets are in a very bad way.

This will trigger an economic collapse which will bring down the eurozone. Germany will want country rated euros to avoid having to bail Italy.

House prices in Europe will drop to a rent / value rate similar to the USA, as property owners scrap for money.

USA will face similar problems and inflation will start being a problem.

China will start buying more in Europe and USA (same as they did with Africa).

Hey now, we're talking about predictions, not things that have already happened...

If that happens then interest rates will rise, which will be very, very bad for both businesses and home owners. If it happened quickly enough it'd make 2008 look like a walk in the park.

The ever-expanding massive pile of debt robs the economy of dynamism, which prompts an economic heat death. That's what happened to Japan and it's exactly the reason US growth keeps trending ever downward and will continue to and why the Fed has been doing crazy shit and can't spur the expected inflation result. The US has begun to suffer a debt-based heat death economically, where the cost of debt and the (mis)allocation of capital to low-return (de facto junk) debt robs the economy of the capital required for investment to expand effectively. And the more debt piles up the worse the effect gets, until you get to a point where the bureaucrats in charge just start doing direct currency chop-downs (aka mauling the population's standard of living), which is the point Japan arrived at several years ago. You end up with tens of trillions of dollars tied up yielding zip, heat death. Covid accelerated the dire fiscal situation for the US by nearly a decade, which is about to hand China the keys to taking superpower charge of half of the planet (if you're in Asia, you're particularly about to be screwed, as the US is going to be increasingly forced to stand-down there; before the decade is out, a transfer of hegemonic power will occur in Asia). The US is now blatantly bankrupt and spiraling (not just slipping toward it, the US is sprinting at it), it will be forced to pull back. The US jumped right to print to fund everything mode (there is nobody to buy $1.5-$2 trillion in junk debt every year other than the Fed), which will speed up the heat death by a lot (and as that gets worse, the politicians will want to spend ever greater sums to attempt to offset the stagnation to placate the angry voters, which will make it worse even faster; spiral). If China didn't release the virus on purpose, strategically it would make perfect sense to do so (and hell, if you're them you might consider doing it again given the amazing results, their global export share is now the highest for any nation since the US in 1981).

And to throw a new wrench into the economic disaster, the American population has had enough of it all. The clowns in charge in DC can no longer throw around bailouts without having to pay off the public with magic printed money too. They'll never be able to do bailouts again without throwing large sums of money at the public (all via debt and currency destruction, adding to the previously mentioned economic heat death scenario). $2,000 stimulus checks? $463 billion, 2/3 of the military budget. You see the choice that's coming very soon? The bureaucrats can feel it at this point, their senses are tingling; this, or that; this, or that; which will it be? For a bit yet they can pretend we can do both, but that won't last much longer at the rate Rome is fiscally burning. Then all hell breaks loose (already begun) as the factions start to eat eachother over priorities.

Europe is enjoying much of the same effect, including the intense economic stagnation (for 13-14 years now Western Europe has seen zero net GDP growth, and it'll continue). Trillions of euros held in garbage paper yielding negative, their economies have been in the freezer for a long time now. Nothing like paying a government to eat you.

Inflation will once again surprise the clown economists. Golly gee, what magic is this such that 0% rates aren't causing a lot of inflation. Golly gee it worked before, what's different now versus the 1970s. We just can't figure it out, our textbooks say this should work. Print more fiat, we gotta spur inflation! $20 trillion in worthless Keynesian stimulation isn't enough? Print more! We'll find the number eventually, keep digging that hole.

No field has more idiots than economics.

Alternative explanation: economics is hard & illusory superiority is a thing.

Keynesian economimists understand what's going on perfectly well. It's the mainstream Chicago school economimists that can't gasp what's going on. Because Keynesian's totally know what a liquidity trap is. Keynes would easily understand that monetary stimulus in a liquidity trap just results in capital imposing larger and larger burdens on the real economy.

Put the due where it's due. The ideological followers of Milton Friedman the dummkopfs you're talking about here.

I don't think there is much to argue about this. Every year changes everyone's life for the long term.

- Terence McKenna becomes more relevant again; recordings of McKenna's talks such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijA5RHTJaV4 reach million views

- if we look back in 2030, we'll see 2021 being the year that marks the beginning of the psychedelic renaissance

- as a consequnce of this, more VC money will be poured into BCI research & meditation tech; I expect headspace to ipo

- not optimistic about neuralink's consumer debut though

As Stanislov Grof has said:

> Psychedelics, used responsibly and with proper caution, would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology and medicine or the telescope is for astronomy.

https://maps.org/news-letters/v21n3/v21n3-26_29.pdf

- Much, much stronger ties between central europe and china

- Chia will become top 10 crypto

- DNA manipulation will become much bigger

- Facebook will go into proper decline

- Start of the break up of google ad business from google search business

- A few small EU alternative search engines come up

- Battery as a platform continues accelerating - new mobility form factors, battery grid scale storage

- Marketplaces with more than 2 links in the chain start eroding one of the middle links (primary ad channel will connect direct)

- Cross-border payments will become far easier

- Twitter will bring in a bunch of tools to combat toxicity

- So much travel in summer - hotels will have one of their best years ever

- AirBNB stock will do what tesla stock is doing - driven by reddit WSB kids

- Asia will crack down on scammy crypto companies

- MediaSynthesis will advance further - a major new tool that makes it trivially easy

- Google search results will start becoming way better and super personalised as their data efforts start showing results

- OpenStreetMaps will become a serious-serious contender to Google Maps

- Amazon gets into general purpose search?

- SSDs start dominating, NVME becomes standard for new desktops

- Google focuses far more on local, smaller sites to the detriment of big sites. Many well known brands (e.g tripadvisor) lose traffic

- Pinterest gets investigated for finance-related matters

- SARS viruses become the new normal

This one is very surprising to me. I think Google's results have been getting worse for me every year for a long time. They used to supposedly have the goal of getting people off the search page as quickly as possible, but it seems to me their recent data efforts have the goal of making people spend more time on search pages where they can see and click on ads. I.e. worse search results, caused by ignoring search terms and showing unrelated things instead. Why would 2021 be any different?

People still wear masks quite a bit.

Parents of children in closed school systems in the suburban US will get even more outraged as schools stay closed into 2021, with dramatic political consequences.

Finally the US succeeds at anti trust for some big tech, though not for more beloved brands like Apple

Post COVID, Massive explosion of travel and restaurant visiting causes tons of demand that the waning industry can’t meet.

Major industrialized countries have better surveillance for potential pandemics. It’s taken much more seriously.

The major issue shifts to something completely unexpected (not Covid) by years end

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that there is no such thing as a predictable year

Fiscal and monetary policies will thighten compared to 2020. The assets that had the most speculation in 2020 will correct violently: Tesla, Bitcoin ...

The US-China relationship will improve.

Big social media (FB, Twitter etc.) will split amongst political lines.

Cannabis will be decriminalized at the Federal level.

Covid Fatigue, no one will give a shit by summer.

DOW 36k. There is no limit to the amount of stimulus.

- Car traffic will be only slightly less than 2019 levels, despite rolling lockdowns all year.

- Brexit will start to be noticed on supermarket shelves.

- The built-up stresses of 2020/2021 will turn some relatively minor issue into a genuine political crisis, in a straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back situation. It might bring down the government.

NI is now effectively separated from the rest of the UK, so will rely on Ireland a lot more for trade. For sure there will be more cooperation between the two countries, but in the last survey only 20% of NI residents favoured a united Ireland. [0] I doubt Brexit has shifted that number too much. I'd more expect NI to become an independent country, but Scotland will be first.

In terms of Ireland I think this is good for them, as it'll give them more opportunity to be more independent. At least when I was there (nearly 10 years ago, in Dublin), it felt like 'the UK but slightly different', i.e. very different from the rest of Europe. Online retailers often didn't have an IE store, but most UK retailers would ship to IE for extra shipping.

Now it will probably be the other way, IE retailers will ship to NI for a little extra. The combined markets have a population of nearly 7m people, so it's bigger than a lot of European countries.

As OP says it might be painful to begin with (for NI and IE) as they adjust to the new position. Ireland drives on the same side of the road as the UK, and uses UK plugs, so cars and consumer goods will most likely become more expensive too.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Northern...

edit: It's been so long, but we should remember Libya, Mali, northern Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo. Liberia and South Africa are stable though, and most African countries merely languish in peaceful obscurity.

JavaScript frameworks will feel a lot faster with more accessible implementations of SSR and React finally shipping concurrent-mode.

In turn, of course, suburbs will probably rise in value and attractiveness.

For example, Vancouver's real estate is pricey because it's one of the nicest places to live in the world. The rise of teleworking won't erase the mild weather all year round, the access to world-class mountain sports (hiking, climbing, cycling, skiing, etc.), the ocean with its views, great asian food, the rule of law, liberal culture, etc.

That's a very different scenario than, say, Winnipeg where it's -30 half the year and the other half the year the insects are so bad they send trucks around to fog pesticides. Plus you have conservative culture, no mountains nor ocean, little in the way of outdoor sports unless you like quad biking and fishing, or hockey.

I lived in Vancouver for a short while, and have visited Winnipeg several times for conferences and work trips. I can see reasons to live in Vancouver even if you didn't have to live there for work. I can see no reasons to want to live in Winnipeg unless someone was literally bathing me in money.

It’s always atop my insight-free lists of long overdue events. Keep a pair of shoes and a gallon of water by your bed.

* The theorem prover Lean 4 will be released.

Work from home is normalized. Commercial real estate prices will drop as companies pare-down their office space. Wework has better prospects than ever.

Travel stocks and in person events go crazy.

A renaissance for Ruby on Rails. Old fashioned SPA's are overbought/oversold, the pendulum will swing to the middle for many use-cases.

New security practices are developed, deployed, and become commonplace in the enterprise. I'd invest in this area if I had a way. Maybe honeypots, tripwires, or something new. Whatever can be sold as an antidote to the SolarWinds debacle, irony of security products as a vector aside.

Deepfakes start to surface in the public consciousness in a way they haven't so far. None of this is good.

Looking under Trump's rug gets ugly--Democrats are faced with seeming to "hunt" a political opponent, or letting some really bad stuff go.

The scary Deepfakes will be the ones that are 90% benevolent with 10% subtle naughty bits. They'll go undetected by the press. Imagine spreading anti-CCP propaganda in China but not in obvious ways that it can go under the radar of CCP censorship. Complete disarray.

Federal reserve cryptocurrency comes out of the blue and is finally released but it is hampered by privacy concerns and mistrust.

The singleton will be rediscovered and frameworks, languages and religions will form around the concept.

Apple's processor series has an upgrade and has an unexpected name

Apple gets tired of Qualcomm and starts making radios as well (Qualcomm's has not released adequate drivers to allow 5g in a multi-SIM environment, delaying Apple's ability to offer it)

A Camera manufacturer implements "Live Photos" in the RAW format with key frame selection

A cooler running version of the Raspberri Pi is released

Jurassic Park will actually open.

* More pollution, global warming, rise of sea level, more health threats etc.

* Political and socio-economical instability, crisis and maybe a third world war?

The merits of this I will leave to the reader, but there has surely been a long-lasting shift in public opinion against social media due to the unrelenting assault of Trumpism. The irony of this assault being launched from twitter.com/realdonaldtrump is not lost on me.

Apple controls 50% of domestic US computing and has redefined the concept of a computer to be a highly taxed walled garden with mysterious, byzantine rules.

More companies like Epic will sue them and Apple will ultimately be forced to open up iOS to 3rd party apps.

Apple can't be a smartphone manufacturer, computer manufacturer, OS provider, services provider, Hollywood film studio, music studio, automotive company, etc. This is standard oil.

further, shutting down websites at random or just specific domains would be wildly unpopular with all voters. I like how you're thinking, though

The question is - is it going to be replaced by something similar?

My friend who I'm on the phone with: "most theaters will shut down and AMC will launch their own streaming service"

VR headsets as gaming platforms become commonplace

Global politics becomes even more strained

More software libraries develop that use quantum algorithms in the backend.

One of the major company among IBM, Nvidia, Intel, Apple and AMD will release a prototype minimal viable Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) alongside CPU similar to GPUs.

Off the back of that, stimulus and other popular liberal policies will be enacted. And they'll be successful and well-liked.

I also think Joe Biden won't do anything to stop the filibuster.

https://www.newsweek.com/ufo-report-government-agencies-180-...

The political divide continues to grow in the US. Terrorist acts are attributed to alt-right ideology, and government starts to remove particularly egregious examples of online hate websites.

Only a third of the country will be vaccinated by the end of Q2 2021.

Hate speech is free speech in the US, though. The government can only get involved if there's incitement of "imminent lawless action". I could see private companies trying to stomp out the sites (refuse to host them, etc.), but the government can't do anything except in the case I mentioned earlier.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-seizes-domain-n...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/united-states-seizes-27...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/california-operators-my...

Tech companies will close offices and have most employees work from home

Google will finally make a smart watch on par with the Apple wacth

I highly doubt that. They've managed to ruin even the amazing Pixel phones with poor hardware and poor decisions on pricing and availability. I have a Pixel 2XL and desperately want to upgrade but I can't because both Pixel 4 and Pixel 5 are not available in India! I've been waiting to buy a good non-Apple smartwatch for years now but I can't wait anymore. I prefer Android over iOS, but the current affair of things is making me give up and just go for iPhone and Apple Watch.

Similar is Google detecting heart disease from photos of the back of the eye, whatever happened with that? [1]

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/08/non-invasive-glucose-monit...

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/19/17027902/google-verily-ai...

1. the vaccine will prove effective against a certain strains of virus but ineffective against other strains, giving a false confidence and later re-emergence of corona.

2. WFH will continue. and companies planning to reopen offices in mid 2021, will postpone till 2022.

3. Trump will refuse to leave White House. grabs popcorn

4. College students graduating in 2021 will face severe competition with 2020 unemployed grads leading to stagnation in salary for entry level jobs. C level positions will have no impact.

5. IT will forget about SolarWinds attack and move on as irresponsibly as before

- Rumors about Apple AR glasses, but no release in 2021.

- GPT-4 ships, we see more trends pointing to AI generality with deep mind probably releasing another interesting paper.

- Vaccine distribution resolves covid in western countries by late summer/fall.

- Tesla ships cybertruck and full self driving beta to more users (maybe fleet wide to people who purchased FSD).

- VC 'move to Miami' rhetoric dies down and most people move back to SF bay in the short term post covid remote work.

- We see flexible remote schedules post covid, but most people still go into the office, most work still is office based (and those companies are more productive).

- Peloton continues to do well even post covid when people have gone back to normal life.

- Starlink ships and is a major telecom player, including in areas like China or the Middle East where governments try and control network access/comms. It makes good internet possible anywhere, Loon and other attempts fail to compete because their solutions are worse and less globally available.

- Bitcoin remains volatile

- Nikola dies, companies that went public via a SPAC are generally worse than companies that go public via other means.

- Post covid travel/consumer spend boom 'roaring twenties' response.

- USG institutions start to repair themselves post-trump crony damage, but congress is still largely grid-locked on legislation. Some republicans continue to refuse to accept Biden and pretend they're just doing the same thing dems did about the Russian interference/obstruction of justice in 2016 (they're not).

- Woke politics dies down a bit in Biden era, but is still an issue

- More writers go direct via Substack and newsletters siphon off the best writers. Major news outlets continue to get weaker and more partisan. Something interesting happens in this space.

- Vaccine program will mobilize and kick start the economy. Big Time. New restaurants will open up, it will be like a forest fire that wiped out the trees but new vegetation will grow. New business will start up.

- Travel is going to be out of control once everyone is vaccinated and cases plummet after herd immunity is reached.

- Python will have a great dep management finally.

- M1X is going to ignite the competition from AMD/Intel.

- US Senate will go blue next week. New pro-democracy laws will be passed in next 2 years after this shit show.

- Remote only jobs and startups will invigorate local towns and decentralization of cities. Local ISPs, local farming, local means of production.

- SpaceX starship will demonstrate further success.

Long Term:

- US, EU, APEC region will start becoming less reliant on China over the course of next 10 years. Fungibility of supply chain and decentralization. Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philipines, Eastern Europe, Mexico will see rise in manufacturing industries.

- New chip companies outside of Taiwan.

- Defense spending will go through the roof, defense stocks will do exceptionally well.

- Globalism 2.0 will put checks and balances for healthier international cooperation.

I'm curious about this one. Who do you think will put the pressure / lead the change? (In terms of organisations or gov groups rather than countries)

As I understand, it is relatively easy to cross-contaminate samples. How is this risk reduced? Or do all people who handled the biological evidence also get DNA tested to exclude themselves?

And do all US states and federal level courts treat DNA equally. More interesting to me: Might we see a case where a criminal can be tied to the crime by biological evidence, but there is a court system "gotcha" that allows them to remain free?

Before 2030, Snowden will not only be pardoned but will be appointed head of the CIA or equivalent.

Companies will push to have an annual Corona Virus Vaccine. Covered by insurance and mandated as much as possible.

RISC-V will start to show up in peoples hands.

Something interesting will happen with Intel.

That's really all I got, and two of them are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

- Substantial number of tech workers remain remote as vaccines role out

- Remote workers crave community after covid lockdowns

- Commercial real estate is cheap

If remote is the future I expect to see mega coworking spaces filled with desks, gyms, spas, bars, workshops, etc. Will have the benefit of being able to choose who you're around every day and without the gaze of your company's HR department.

We are turning our workplaces into identity politics re-education camps, and paying our own prison guards.

Big players in airline, restaurant and other hard hit businesses will go bust.

US war on Iran with some major development in the region especially Irak/Yemen.

Vaccination will be accepted by majority of people either through good results seen on elderly, or through a vaccine pass required by businesses.

US Government will announce it has been studying sophisticated UFO activity seriously for decades. They will acknowledge that the technology is unprecedented and could be of extra terrestrial origin.

Joe Biden will have repeated episodes of public dimentia. Public trust in his abilities will erode.

Tesla stock will collapse by at least 25% over twelve months. Afterpay (APT.AX) will lose 80% of its market cap. The price of Iron ore will reach $175.

2. China will eradicate the virus within their borders, because their vaccine is easier to manufacture and deploy. And is probably safer, since it uses the traditional inactivated virus technique. So less side effects for most people.

3. Housings prices will continue increasing. Further separating the haves vs. the have-nots.

4. QE infinity is here to stay. Low interest rates will continue to push up asset prices for stocks and housing.

5. The virus will continue to ravage America for the next 5 years. Then the mutations will come.

6. Lots of houses will be foreclosed on, but wealthy companies and investors will swoop them up for pennies on the dollar.

7. American politicians will continue to be absolutely clueless, as to how their decisions and indecisions, will further ravage the fabric of society.

- Eventually the virus mutates and becomes less lethal –it needs a healthy host population to survive. Evolution, not vaccines will drive normalization.\n - Cloud gaming explodes in Q1. Just before spring we will have a killer app for VR. - Much more paid-communities... - Close to the end of Q3, Apple starts creating a buzz around AR glasses.

Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021. There will be some violence on or just after January 6 (certification of electoral college votes) and January 20, but it will be minor. Trump will rage and sulk, but Twitter will cancel his account on January 21 for violation of terms of service.

I think that a lot of people worked from home for the first time, but without the required preparations. Which left a bad taste and probably turned a lot of people off.

Working from home is not a universal experience, the experience varies if you live in villa or a one room apartment. Varies, if you're sharing the space. Varies, if you have had to take care of kids at the same time, etc...

I see a lot of people who couldn't wait to get back to the office even if it meant they had to wear a mask all day.

In any case, I think that what the executives and CEO want will trump what the individual workers prefer.

I mean, it existed before, just not at this level. The difference is that it won't be weird or fringe. You're applying for a job, but you want to work from home? For the majority of places, that was a deal breaker before. Now it won't be.

India might experience one or two major terrorist attacks.

Trump will be more desperate and loud.

Amazon Prime / Netflix might bring in pay-per-view / pay-per-hour options.

I am very curious to know what made you predict this

As the vaccine rolls out in the U.S., we should slowly see at least a short term economic boost as spending increases, potentially increasing inflation.

Housing prices will continue to rise with less and less inventory, especially for single family homes.

2. Bitcoin will hit $60K but will also touch again $5K in 2021

3. Trump will remain President

4. $VIX will hit $100

It sounds like Pence is the one that counts (or doesn't) the electoral votes, so depending on the circumstances it could result in neither candidate getting 270, which results in a "contingent election" - one vote per state, from the House of Representatives, which would be majority Republican, for the president. The Senate would choose the vice-president in the same way - so if this actually happens, it's apparently possible (if absurdly unlikely) to get a Trump/Harris or Biden/Pence outcome.

One possible reason Pence could do that is if the contested states send two sets of electors - one certified by the governor (how we usually do it) and one by the (Republican) legislature. My understanding is that if both groups of electors are correctly certified, either Pence would have to choose which to count, ignore both, or the Supreme Court would get involved. Key phrase for finding more on this is "dueling electors"; a lot of places are saying the legislature-certified ones wouldn't be valid, but a handful say it's possible.

* there will be hyperinflation and it will be reflected in asset prices

Companies will embrace remote work after they realize they can stop paying for expensive offices and all the expensive services associated to them.

AI/ML will get better at learning and all the skepticals will be ridiculed forever.

Excessive monetary and fiscal policies sets off an unstoppable spiral of inflation in the US and Europe.

Trump declares himself US president. Escalating political violence in the US.