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Bitcoin surpassed $100,000 in December
Even AI can’t predict the future (yet), but two of our tech writers have taken a look at what they think will be important in 2025.
Crypto’s friend in the White House?
As 2022 drew to a close, the outlook was bleak for the cryptocurrency sector.
One of his best-known companies, FTX, collapsed with $8bn (£6.3bn) of customer funds untraceable.
In March 2024, the company’s co-founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding customers and investors.
The scandal has shaken confidence across the industry.
It seemed that cryptocurrencies would remain a niche product, with an enthusiastic but relatively small audience.
But a few months later, the industry was once again bubbling with optimism. Behind this enthusiasm lies the success of Donald Trump in the presidential election of November 5.
The feeling was that it would be more favorable to the cryptocurrency sector and, so far, that seems to be the case.
In early December, Trump announced that he would nominate former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Paul Atkins as chairman of the Wall Street regulator.
Mr. Atkins is considered much more pro-cryptocurrency than the outgoing president, Gary Gensler.
This announcement allowed the value of one bitcoin, the largest of the many cryptocurrencies, to climb to $100,000.
“With Trump winning, you can imagine that in 2025 you will get proactive regulation. You will get some negative regulation removed, which will then allow banks and other institutions to enter that space ” says Geoffrey Kendrick, Global Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered.
In particular, Mr. Kendrick points to a directive issued by the SEC called SAB 121. Since it took effect in 2022, it has made it difficult for banks and other financial companies to provide cryptocurrency services.
Such a move could help Trump fulfill his July promise to make the United States the cryptocurrency capital of the world.
If he follows through on this pledge, it would be a remarkable turnaround from 2021, when Trump described Bitcoin as a “scam.”
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What do you want the AI to know about you?
AI becomes personal
As AI tools move into our phones – Apple, Google and Samsung have all launched services that can edit photos, translate languages and search the web – we’re at the start of ‘an era in which AI becomes an intrinsic part of our digital lives and increasingly useful on a personal level.
That is if we allow it, because it requires a leap of faith.
Let’s take diary management as an example. An AI tool can effectively manage your calendar for you, if you allow it access. But how far should we go?
To be truly useful, does that also mean it needs to know who you prefer to avoid meeting, or the relationships you want to keep secret, and from whom?
Would you like them to provide you with summaries of counseling sessions or medical appointments?
This is deeply personal information, potentially both extremely embarrassing and extremely valuable if something goes wrong that results in it being shared. Do you trust big tech companies with this kind of data?
Microsoft is pushing hard at this particular door. He got in trouble in 2024 for introducing a tool called Recall, which took snapshots of laptops every few seconds, in order to help users locate content they had seen but couldn’t remember where .
It has now made a number of changes to the product – which was never launched – but is maintaining it.
“I think we’re heading into a fundamentally new era where there will be ever-present, persistent, and very capable co-pilot companions in your daily life,” the company’s head of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, told me recently .
Despite the challenges, Ben Wood, chief analyst at technology research firm CCS Insight, expects more personalized AI services to emerge in 2025.
“Results will be continually updated based on evolving data sources, such as emails, messages, documents and social media interactions.
“This will allow the AI service to be specifically tailored to a person’s communication style, needs and preferences,” he says.
But Wood acknowledges that letting AI run amok on your personal information will be a big step.
“Trust will be key,” says Mr Wood.
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Investments expected to flow into data centers next year
Data in motion
The more money is invested in AI, the more data centers will need to be built.
Training and running AI requires a lot of computing power and works best with the latest computer chips and servers.
Over the next five years, up to $1 trillion could be invested in data centers by the largest data users, including Google, Microsoft and Meta, according to CCS Insight.
In Europe alone, between 2024 and 2028, data center capacity is expected to grow by an average of 9% per year, according to real estate services company Savills.
But these new facilities are unlikely to be built in current data center hubs like London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.
High house prices in these towns – Savills says that in London land prices can reach £17m per acre – and tightening electricity supplies mean developers will look elsewhere.
In the UK, cities like Cambridge, Manchester and Birmingham could well host the next wave of data center construction.
Elsewhere, Prague, Genoa, Munich, Düsseldorf and Milan could be considered in Europe.
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Hot property: Tech companies will scramble to get Nvidia’s new computer chip
At the heart of some of these new data centers will be the latest computer chip from Nvidia, the company that dominates the market for chips used for AI.
Unveiled in March 2024, the Blackwell chip should be marketed in significant numbers in 2025.
The new chip should allow tech companies to train AI four times faster and see AI perform 30 times faster than current computer chips, according to Vivek Arya, senior semiconductor analyst at Bank of America Securities.
Nvidia’s biggest customers, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Coreweave, will likely be the first to benefit from the technology, according to reports.
But other customers may struggle to get their hands on the superchip, with “limited supply in 2025”, according to Mr Arya.
