It's easy to get distracted by the sheer rise in value of bitcoin, it's a speculators dream at the moment but blockchain and cryptocurrencies have much more to offer than that.
Blockchain is the buzz word that's raising millions if not billions in funding as developers come up with intriguing ideas on how to improve things in many industries including health care, insurance, asset management and voting. Banking is of course one of the first things that comes up when talking about blockchain, but the list seems endless with gaming (as in things like Minecraft) and gaming (as in betting) already on their way.
Insurance is an area that's getting a lot of interest too, mostly because putting it on the blockchain 'should' make it more efficient and help to prevent fraud, which means (hopefully) cheaper insurance for us all.
Then there is healthcare, how can you have a Dapp for healthcare? Think of it this way, if you had all your healthcare records on a decentralised system where you control who sees it, you could consult any doctor and allow them to view your records. In the UK a service called Push Doctor allows you to consult an NHS doctor within about 5 minutes via encrypted video link.
They can refer you to a specialist, give you a sick note and prescribe medication. You can authorise them to see you medical records but it takes time. If your records were on the blockchain and under your control, you could give them immediate access. This would surely make the system safer, prevent abuse and ensure you didn't have to wait sometimes weeks, to see your local GP.
Then of course, for me there's the big one, voting and decision making. I think most people (not all) would say that politicians, those that make the decisions which heavily impact our lives and the quality of that life, are, in the main, corrupt. Corrupt as in making decisions without taking how it affects us into account. Taking 'contributions' to push through legislation that benefits a company rather than the public is rife if the media is anything to go by.
What if (I love that phrase, so full of possibilities) we had a voting system that allowed us to dictate to our servants (the politicians) what we should do? What if voting was transparent and not subject to 'recounts' etc? What if, instead of politicians making decisions that benefited we the people not huge, faceless corporations?
There are so many Dapps coming up that the choice is bewildering. Just so you can see the diverse applications, here is a list of just a tiny portion.
http://www.zla.io/ Buy tokens with one click
https://babbians.com/ Blockchain banking
https://dentacoin.com/ Healthcare
http://ammbr.com/ Crowdsourcing wifi
https://radix.global/ Null fabric - beyond blockchain
https://golem.network/ Crowdsourcing computing power
https://kryptonia.io/ Earn for doing tasks
https://firstblood.io/ eSports
https://alice.si/ Returning trust in charities
http://www.amalgamatedhumanity.com/ Slack coin
https://gnosis.pm/ Prediction apps
https://storj.io/ Crowdsourced cloud storage
https://horizonstate.com/ Voting and decision making
http://ethertweet.net/ Uncensored tweeting
https://aragon.one/ Decentralised organisations
So you see, there is so much more to cryptocurrencies and blockchain and, whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, it WILL affect your life.
