In an interview with a large online cryptocurrency publication, the Chief Technology Officer of Hedera Hashgraph said that although interest in blockchain has gone up in 2020, he thinks that bigger things will happen in 2021. The CTO, Leemon Baird, has a doctorate degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. He explained that the whole world looks at the cryptocurrency industry as a blockchain or type of DLT. They see it as something interesting and of value. Baird added that he saw a big increase this year in interest all over the world. He predicts that 2021 will bring even more interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain to take place.

When elaborating on his optimism for 2021, Baird added that he is not like the other people from the past years who said that there was not much going on this year, but next year will be better. His take is that this year was great, and next year will be excellent. Baird says that the blockchain industry is already seeing a start of more interest from around the world. People are taking it seriously and see it as a real thing rather than a figment of investor imaginations.

For a long time, people have seen blockchain as a thing from the sidelines. Now they are for real getting into it. They are starting to invest in it. Companies are accepting it and actually using it in their business operations. Baird believes that the blockchain industry is at the knee of an exponential curve, but the general vision of that curve is obscured because we are looking at it too closely. We are looking at the trees and not seeing the whole forest, in Baird's vision of the current circumstances.

As for Hashgraph, the business recently announced a partnership with the Chopra Foundation. This partnership will develop a mental health platform that they hope will attract one billion users in the upcoming year or two. The platform will allow for more telehealth services for a type of healthcare that is sorely lacking in a lot of places around the world.