Peer to Peer Payments and Lending
Peer-to-peer economy facilitated by blockchain has been among the examples for the technology’s disruptive and innovative potential. However, using Bitcoin to send money around the world is slightly different than using Bitcoin as a currency. Peer-to-peer payments and lending belong to the first case. By eliminating the intermediaries, the blockchain can enable cheaper cross-border remittances and therefore enhance the spending power of recipients.
Some startups:
- Abra: Abra has built the first global, peer-to-peer, digital cash, money transfer App using Blockchain technology for secure money transfers and payments while protecting the value of deposits in local currency.
- BTC Jam: it provides a peer-to-peer lending service where people from around the world connect to borrow and lend using bitcoin. It is allowed to users in countries that lack a local credit score system to receive loans, based on an in-house credit-scoring algorithm.
- Bitbond: a global peer-to-peer lending platform for Bitcoins. Borrow Bitcoins or earn interest on your Bitcoins on our international marketplace.
- Circle: a peer-to-peer payments technology company utilizing Bitcoin and traditional fiat currencies.
- Plutus: a true peer to peer exchange network on the blockchain. PlutusDEX runs as a Dapp on the Ethereum blockchain.
Internet of Things
Blockchain technology could provide a way to track the unique history of individual devices, by recording a ledger of data exchanges between it and other devices, web services, and human users. Examples include electronic couriers to securely transfer sensitive information, escrow services to transfer ownership rights, or even auto-installation services to verify and push updates to the software governing other Digital-to-analog converters (DACs).
Interesting startups in this field:
- Chimera-inc: It is a hub that links the home network to the cloud and electrical devices around it.
- Filament: Filament is building a decentralized IoT stack to ensure that devices can securely communicate and transact value without any siloed infrastructure. Filament builds sensors (called “Taps”) that are used by companies such as Amazon and SpaceX.
Decentralized Markets
Decentralized markets are about to kill e-commerce because it will be possible for any two people in the planet to trade with one another without depending on any institution. For instance, eBay/Amazon users and sellers won’t make much sense after this field is fully disrupted. On the other hand, the possible scale of blockchain in this field will bring ecommerce to countries that still have not experienced what these traditional marketplaces have brought to industrialized nations.
Some startups in this field:
- Open Bazaar: Decentralized marketplace for instantly trading goods and services with anyone using Bitcoin.
- Slock.it: It disrupts the billions dollar disruptors by enabling anyone to rent, sell or share their property without middleman.
Proof of Authorship and Ownership
To express the authorship of any kind of document (paper, photos or audio/video recording) something called proof of existence may be used. Time stamping data in an unalterable state while maintaining confidentiality is perfect for many fields, especially legal and artistic applications. This simple method allows anyone to store a hash of any document into the Blockchain, thus proving it existed at the time when a particular block was mined. The author’s name or other identifier would be included into the document, making it clear that he knew about it back then. If nobody proves the possession/familiarity with that particular file/work dated before, the author should be able to claim his rights.
A few startups in this field:
- Proofofexistence: Anonymously and securely store an online distributed proof of existence for any document.
- Blocktech: an open-source standard in active development to allow users to publish and distribute original content themselves, from music to videos to feature films, 3d printable inventions, recipes, books and just about anything else.
- Clipperz: A tool to protect and manage intellectual property on the blockchain. A place where you can share your works knowing that authorship and copyright are secured. And where selling a digital product is as easy and secure as selling a physical one.
- Stampery: Create an immutable record of existence, integrity and ownership of your documents, business processes and communications leveraging the Blockchain.
- Bitproof: BitProof protects people’s creations from being stolen and provides the ability to create legal proofs of documents in less than a minute over the blockchain.
- Blockai: a proof of ownership certificate in which can legally help prove you are the owner.
Data Storage
Current cloud storage services are centralized — thus users must place trust in a single storage provider. With the Blockchain, this can become decentralized. While some traditional industries such as Banking have already proved to benefit from decentralized data storage, some fields such as the health industry are about to experience a disruptive change. Consider all the sensitive information that is associated with health: identity, diseases, treatments, payment, etc. that could be privately secured and stored thanks to blockchain.
Some startups in this field:
- Tierion: has built a platform for data storage and verification using the Bitcoin blockchain.
- Peernova: builds immutable systems for large-scale, commercial applications.
- NXT: a decentralized data storage system. Own your data.
- Filecoin: a data storage network and electronic currency based on Bitcoin.