It is still very hard to believe that just under 10 years ago a thing known as Bitcoin was non-existent in stark contrast to the present time when it is rarely ever out of the headlines. The birth of Bitcoin is far more than the creation of a functional decentralized cryptocurrency, it heralded the beginning of a revolutionary technology which powers it known as the blockchain technology. Fast-forward to the present time this industry that Bitcoin began in 2009 is worth hundreds of billions of dollars with huge projections for growth going into the future. The blockchain technology has proven to be highly versatile and almost seamlessly adaptable to any industry or business sphere for that matter. And in this piece we will go over a few verticals that this technology is already shaping, and some that it will likely shape in the times ahead.
Personal ID Protection
The internet is one of the greatest inventions of mankind since the beginning of history, which brought about a lot of freedoms for people all over the world and liberalized the access to information. However these freedoms came at a cost, as it also brought about an explosion to an already existing problem in the form of identity theft. Due to the free and ungoverned nature of the internet, millions of people have fallen victim of identity theft from online criminals who usually hijack these identities to use for financial gains. It is a frequent occurrence where hackers break into the systems of big online retail chains and steal the identity data of millions of people as well as their credit card information and then go on to use this data to wipe out their savings our max out their cards.
This intractable problem is a key sector where the blockchain technology has the perfect solution for. In its nature, the blockchain technology is an incorruptible, un-hijack-able infrastructure on which a new safe and highly accessible identity databases can be built. There are already startups that have delved into this field by offering users an absolutely secure decentralized means of identification which if taken in by the mainstream industry will mean people no longer need passports or other paper IDs to travel around or identify themselves at places such as banks. The blockchain technology has features which makes it impossible for anyone to clone a user’s ID once uploaded on the blockchain.
Contracts
Business in all fields and niches go hand in hand with the execution of contracts between transacting parties. This often comes with problems as due to human nature, we often back out of a deal, or try to change its terms to our favor once it gets rolling. There are even times when the person given charge of the drafting the contracts (i.e. the lawyers) are found to be biased against one party or the other, which creates a huge problem for business, as contracts need to be upheld as law if a sector wants to thrive, and excel above others. The lack of trust between businesses has meant great deals fall through and profits get lost in the process
With the advent of the blockchain technology, it created its own solution for all businesses in the form of Smart Contracts. Smart Contracts are a few lines of instructions that are attached to a payment between parties, where by the sender of the payment attaches a certain condition under which the payment will get finalized. And once this contract is put into play neither the sender of the said payment nor the recipient can change the conditions set. And should the recipient fulfill those set conditions, the contract is automatically executed. The main advantage of Smart Contract is that it is able to create a safe buffer-zone where business can thrive, by creating trust where none existed before. It also has the distinct advantage of reducing costs for the transacting parties as they now don’t have to pay any lawyer, facilitator, or any other kind of middleman fees before their contract can be drafted.
Asset Exchanges
The world being a global village is ever coming closer to itself, as red tapes and bureaucratic boundaries are being torn down to enable business succeed. In the past only stock exchanges existed as the sole public spaces where people can invest their money in publicized assets. With the advent of cryptocurrencies we saw the creation of cryptocurrency exchanges which are the exact parallels of the stock exchanges only in their case, they purely deal with the buying and selling of various kinds of cryptocurrencies. However, both the stock exchange and its cryptocurrency counterpart had their own problems, which come in the form of being limited by their respective geographical locations. For example an investor in Nepal will not be able to have a direct access to the New York Stock Exchange or a centralized cryptocurrency exchange based in South Korea.
With the blockchain technology all that is thrown out as new, highly fluid decentralize exchanges try to replace the old problem-prone centralized ones. With a decentralized exchange, the investor gets instant and unfettered access to buy in or invest in any asset, whether company stocks or cryptocurrency from whatever part of the world without having to bear the border red tapes countries set against each other which stifles business. And with the uneasy relationship of the Crypto industry and many governments around the world, decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges make it impossible for any government to crackdown on them as we have witnessed in China where the government shut down all its major exchanges.
Elections
Even when it comes to governance and upholding the people’s will, the blockchain technology has not left this field either. From the US to the developing world elections often come with huge controversies that often threaten the very existence of countries. This problem is prevalent in the third world countries were elections are often blatantly rigged in favor of the incumbent, there by subverting people’s right to choose their leaders despite the presence of election monitors. This is a nightmare that the blockchain technology can easily solve, by tokenizing the election process. Every transaction (and in this case vote cast) is guaranteed to be genuine as the voter’s ID is verified on the blockchain before they are allowed to cast their ballots and as such every vote is completely athenticated, and cannot be duplicated or tampered with.
Money
This s perhaps the blockchain technology’s most widely acknowledged fields of application. Creating a totally decentralized digital asset which people from all over the world notwithstanding geographical location can send and receive amounts almost instantly and at little or no cost, has been the blockchain technology’s greatest success so far. From Bitcoin to Ethereum to hundreds of other new cryptocurrencies, this industry within the space of just 8 years has grown from nothing to be worth in the tens of billions of dollars. One of the cryptocurrency’s biggest selling points is that the transacting parties don’t need any bank or payment provider to see the successful processing of their payments
Insurance
The insurance industry for very long has been dogged by all kinds of problems. Both the insurer and the insured often complain bitterly about one another, with the insurer accusing the insured of falsely claiming benefits while the insured accuse insurers of manipulating their coverage and cheating them out of their rightful benefits. The relationship is an uneasy one at best, and this unending mutual distrust is why the insurance industry is among those with the highest rates of litigation. With the blockchain technology, all these problems will be solved seamlessly and sanity will be restored to what has been a constantly rowdy field. Due to the immutability of blockchain contracts, the insured will be rest assured that they will receive instant payment of their benefits as soon as their conditions warrant, while insurers know that all payments they make are for genuine reasons as the insured cannot manipulate the standing conditions that will trigger payment.
Smart Energy Grids
Another crucial place where the blockchain technology is bringing much needed improvement is in the field of energy consumption, from the homes to huge factories around the world. Due to the greater levels of awareness among people of the dangers posed by climate change, as well as the goal of industries to reduce the cost that comes with their energy consumption as much as possible, the creation of Smart Energy Grids has become an imperative task for all governments and business sectors. And although there have been systems that have been created for this purpose in the past, they have been prone to being tampered with and doctored, which is why the blockchain technology presents the lasting solution to this problem. By leveraging on the blockchain technology’s famous incorruptibility, whole energy grids can be designed to be self-managing where consumption can be monitored and smartly distributed across it. Consumers under this atmosphere will be guaranteed that every bill they get is exactly for what they consumed in power, and energy providers will get a highly efficient grid where energy is effectively distributed to prevent wastages that the present infrastructures are famous for.
