Anthony Kosner at Forbes suggests that bitcoin should be seen as a “necessary building block” in the future of the world economy.

He emphasises in particular the role of the block chain technology, a crucial concept in the cryptocurrency industry that has a lot of potential for applications outside it.

Another major business magazine, Fortune, has earlier this week published an optimistic forecast about the spread of bitcoin in 2015. That article stressed the range of useful options that bitcoin provides, including the use of the block chain as a data or document storage mechanism.

As an example of a product which can be built on top of the block chain technology, Kosner mentions Ethereum, an open source platform for smart contracts. It allows transactions and peer-to-peer agreements to be processed automatically with an open and fraud-resistant system.

The Forbes contributor believes that 2015 will be the turning point for massive adoption of the technology with more block chain-based apps appearing. It is possible that a “killer app” will emerge which will take the technology mainstream, although it is still unclear for Kosner what that might look like.

“The ability to make smart ‘things’ capable of autonomous transactions could be significant. The built-in financial incentives for mining are a big part of what has driven the Bitcoin phenomenon so far and I think these will drive block chain adoption as well”, Kosner writes.