Blockchain - Breaking any chains and blocks assumed in today's economy
Money - An interesting concept which no one can't live without.
It has been with us for thousands of years in various forms, mainly as an agreed and accepted value that is earned by transacting with assets (goods & services) between individuals and corporations. As we have ventured during the centuries, currencies as well appeared and still appearing. The most recent one is Bitcoin, the digital cryptocurrency created in 2008 to allow peer-to-peer digital cash/currency.
Human beings have always spent enormous effort to ensure currency and transactional integrity by ensuring they are verifiable, authenticated, and trusted; usually by employing trusted third party to validate it. Even though book-keeping, accounting, ledgers and even printing money has been in the hands of the few, counterfeiting is still a huge issue to all governments and corporations. This is why Bitcoin (at the beginning and still is) hugely challenged in the market, especially by banks and government as they feel they don't have control over it.
Even with all of this challenge, today Bitcoin has more than $3 Billion value in circulation and used by millions of individuals and even corporations.
However, only until recently, the technology behind Bitcoin, Blockchain, has been the center of interest and seen as one of the biggest disrupting technology since the internet. I believe as well, with our shift towards a sharing economy, intellectual property becoming not the product or service but the experience & personalization (for future trends, you can check by previous blog), Blockchain will play a pivotal role in our lives as digital consumers and digital enterprises.
So what is Blockchain and how will and can the digital consumers and enterprises utilize such a technology?
What is Blockchain?
Blockchain, in simple terms, is an algorithm that stores digital information of a transaction between multiple parties, in a secure, decentralised and trustable way.
Blockchain makes such information verifiable, available, transparent and shared with everyone.
Blockchain has no central authority, making sharing economy's ultimate principle viable where ownership or control of value and its transfer can be done on a peer-to-peer level without the need of a central third party.
Don't worry, even though transactions are available for everyone to see, the identifying information is encrypted and no personal information is shared.
So what will Blockchain bring as benefits to you as digital consumers or enterprises?
As a digital consumer:
Transaction costs will be at lower costs than today through automated, shared, trusted and quick transactions with minimum third party or central manipulation.
Asset transfers will be much quicker as it is peer-to-peer.
Full transparency of records, contracts and information that you deal with, all encrypted and verified by the network (the many) and not a central authority (the few).
Full Digitalization of all interactions that you might have previously required paper/physical medium (e.g. Vehicle registration).
Possibility of taking full advantage of Internet of Things by really letting the machines transact securely without need to be involved (e.g. Fridge can order your food, pay for it securely, even get maintenance checks automatically).
As an enterprise:
You will be able to have a trusted shared processes with your suppliers, providers and distributers lowering the "cost of trust" across your supply chain.
Smarter contracts with full knowledge and transparency on every component of your product/service and ability to update as and when required.
You can reach 100% digitalisation on all your processes and eliminate paper.
Easier and more secure way to do business with other businesses and digital consumers.
Support your data democratisation and allow you to be able to lead in the sharing economy platform.
As a digital consumer and enterprise, there is a catch, but it is simple:
You must be willing and able to trust, work and collaborate in a completely different way with other consumers, customers, suppliers and even competitors.
In the next 100 days,
As a digital consumer, why not check how Bitcoin works and start to utilise it, even just for fun, as you can build the understanding and become more familiar with it.
As an enterprise, identify the areas that possibly Blockchain can be beneficial and start piloting with one or two possibilities. As an enterprise, you can start now already enhancing the knowledge and acceptance of the benefit of Blockchain in your organization, driving mindset change of your employees to be able to identify new your product and service offerings with Blockchain.