Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?

Bitcoin backers will continue to pretend that their hyping of one of the worst ideas in modern history has nothing to do with their significant financial stakes in it.

>starts to remove particularly egregious examples of online hate websites

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.

> Keynesian economists have been hilariously baffled by Japan's situation for decades now

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.

Some country in Africa is going to have a civil war.

>Tech stocks will drop

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.

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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.