K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Over the last three or four years, blockchain adoption has expanded tremendously, and each industry is exploring different use cases for the technology. There are multiple aspects of blockchain — from business to technical and more — but with the way the industry is exploding, it’s really hard to get it right.
It’s best to divide the blockchain topic into two main buckets in order to understand the development of the ecosystem and the key benefits and innovations it provides. One is cryptocurrency, where we cover industries like financial services, insurance and capital markets, including deals via private equity and venture capital. Then we look into the enterprise world, which is about how we apply blockchain as a technology in different industries.
Enterprise blockchain
Last year, we published our “Time for Trust” report, which covers the top five use cases for blockchain technology: provenance, payments and financial instruments, identity, contracts and dispute resolution, and customer engagement. These use cases will have a significant impact on the GDP of a country and the global economy.
The number-one use case is traceability, or provenance. In the future, with the decentralized technological revolution and evolution, you will need to understand and provide full transparency for your consumers. For example, if you are buying medicine for cancer, which is very high priced, you will need to know that it’s authentic, not fake. And this is where we have a technological solution that is enabled by blockchain technology. It is the same with buying haute couture expensive clothes, cars, etc. Consumers who are paying a lot of money must be sure that they are buying authentic items, which is why those supply chains could constitute a killer use case for blockchain — especially in the next decade.
The second use case is around peer-to-peer trading. But how does P2P trading make sense within the supply chain? It is around the logistics market. Say, for example, a company wants to send a container from Amsterdam to Australia. It needs to go to a transport company, which will move a container onto a ship, and then actually it goes ahead. There are also transport providers on the other side of the trade, and they do the same. They unload the container and make sure that it is shipped to the importer. But what if you had a marketplace or platform where you could see how many ships are traveling in the next day or next hour? And if there is a space available, you could directly, yourself, place the container that you want to ship out, meaning that you don’t need a middleman. This is what the future looks like with this kind of decentralized technology.
And then the third — and the last bucket — is around document sharing. How can you store all your bills of lading, letters of credit and certificates in a digitized manner? At the moment, you can do it with a cloud solution, but it’s easy to hack a PDF. And there have been cases where transport companies have faced millions and billions of dollars worth of fraud, forcing them to stick with paper documents because then they know that the paper is exact proof, and they have something tangible on their hands. But with blockchain, you can add a timestamp and completely track how a document is being generated, where it is coming from, who has opened it, who has edited it and who has altered it.
Continue reading: https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-technology-can-change-the-world-and-not-just-via-crypto
It’s best to divide the blockchain topic into two main buckets in order to understand the development of the ecosystem and the key benefits and innovations it provides. One is cryptocurrency, where we cover industries like financial services, insurance and capital markets, including deals via private equity and venture capital. Then we look into the enterprise world, which is about how we apply blockchain as a technology in different industries.
Enterprise blockchain
Last year, we published our “Time for Trust” report, which covers the top five use cases for blockchain technology: provenance, payments and financial instruments, identity, contracts and dispute resolution, and customer engagement. These use cases will have a significant impact on the GDP of a country and the global economy.
The number-one use case is traceability, or provenance. In the future, with the decentralized technological revolution and evolution, you will need to understand and provide full transparency for your consumers. For example, if you are buying medicine for cancer, which is very high priced, you will need to know that it’s authentic, not fake. And this is where we have a technological solution that is enabled by blockchain technology. It is the same with buying haute couture expensive clothes, cars, etc. Consumers who are paying a lot of money must be sure that they are buying authentic items, which is why those supply chains could constitute a killer use case for blockchain — especially in the next decade.
The second use case is around peer-to-peer trading. But how does P2P trading make sense within the supply chain? It is around the logistics market. Say, for example, a company wants to send a container from Amsterdam to Australia. It needs to go to a transport company, which will move a container onto a ship, and then actually it goes ahead. There are also transport providers on the other side of the trade, and they do the same. They unload the container and make sure that it is shipped to the importer. But what if you had a marketplace or platform where you could see how many ships are traveling in the next day or next hour? And if there is a space available, you could directly, yourself, place the container that you want to ship out, meaning that you don’t need a middleman. This is what the future looks like with this kind of decentralized technology.
And then the third — and the last bucket — is around document sharing. How can you store all your bills of lading, letters of credit and certificates in a digitized manner? At the moment, you can do it with a cloud solution, but it’s easy to hack a PDF. And there have been cases where transport companies have faced millions and billions of dollars worth of fraud, forcing them to stick with paper documents because then they know that the paper is exact proof, and they have something tangible on their hands. But with blockchain, you can add a timestamp and completely track how a document is being generated, where it is coming from, who has opened it, who has edited it and who has altered it.
Continue reading: https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-technology-can-change-the-world-and-not-just-via-crypto
