Big Tech is a term used to describe the world’s largest and most influential technology companies, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. These tech giants have become increasingly powerful over the past decade due to their size and market dominance in areas such as mobile phones, search engines, cloud computing and e-commerce. At present they account for more than half of all global digital advertising revenue.
In recent years Big Tech has started to enter the cryptocurrency space with varying levels of involvement. For example, Facebook launched its Libra project in 2019 which attempted (but failed) to launch a new global cryptocurrency backed by fiat currency reserves held at multiple banks worldwide. Similarly Amazon recently announced plans to build an open source blockchain platform called AWS Managed Blockchain that will allow customers to create blockchain networks without having any prior experience or deep technical knowledge about blockchain technology itself.
However not all Big Tech firms are keen on getting involved with cryptocurrencies – Apple has so far refused to list them on its App Store despite customer demand while Google banned crypto mining apps from its Play Store earlier this year citing security risks associated with unregulated software downloads.
The future relationship between Big Tech and cryptocurrencies remains uncertain but it is clear that these tech giants will continue playing an important part in shaping how we use digital money moving forward into 2020s and beyond.
