Bitcoin value increased more than 500% since the beginning of the year. This is tens of times more than the growth of any high-growth tech company on NASDAQ or the NYSE over the last year. Even better, if you invested $100 in Bitcoin in 2010, today you'd be a multimillionaire. This has gotten many people thinking: Are cryptocurrencies the future?

If you thought that the proliferation of smartphones and social media apps with all their cultural and societal impact is a big thing - you ain't seen nothing yet. The digitisation of the global economy has just begun. The Internet of Things (IoT) represents the fourth industrial revolution, and perhaps the most significant one so far.

Drones originally surfaced for military purposes. However, since their introduction, they have rapidly expanded to other areas, such as entertainment, supply chains, rescue missions, and so on. Despite still being strangled by regulation in many countries, this is expected to be loosened. After that, it's a world of opportunities.

Last month, Sophia, a humanoid robot, was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship. This is a first for robots, and begs the question: should robots have equal rights to human beings?

The American multinational company Qualcomm just claimed the first 5G mobile net connection. Although experts only predict 5G to become widely available in a couple of years, it is guaranteed to give us faster speeds and to become the driving technology behind the Internet of Things.

Discussions about financial support mechanisms for the losers of globalisation and the economic crises, about the joint handling of the refugee issue, joint police efforts – in other words, about solidarity in general in Europe – show that further European integration is challenged.

Dry heat and drought in one season and flooding rains in another is part and parcel of our global food futures to 2050. Also on the radar is a tidal wave of change caused by global warming, population growth, digital futures and deep systemic issues in food futures to 2050 and beyond. These issues are influencing food security, scarcity and trends like biotechnology and precision agriculture in the food industry.

Flying cars are no longer a distant dream. The race of bringing new vehicles up to the skies is on and over 10 companies are expecting to launch flying cars by 2022. The sky's the limit for flying cars, but are we ready for the evolution of air civil transportation?

It is hard to dispute that the future of energy is renewable. But this share is expected to increase significantly in the decades to come, powered by new technologies, demand, and concerns over the current sources. What countries are leading this change?

Intelligence amplification (IA) refers to an attempt to enhance human capabilities with intelligent technologies. This type of concept gives a new point of view to the more common description of artificial intelligence (AI), which pursuits a full-scope replication of human intelligence for the computer or robot to be fully atomised.

Clean water and food shortages are two of the world’s pressing problems which require urgent solutions as the population grows and the climate change evolves. As unbelievable as it may sound, new technologies could help us to answer this challenge by harvesting water and food out of thin air.

Elon Musk has published a paper entitled "Making Humans a Multi-planetary Species," where he argues for the necessity of colonizing Mars and how we could possibly get there. There are several companies pushing for a "space economy," which could spark new industries and, if successful, open up hundreds of billions of dollars into the "multi-world economy”.