This is a piece designed to provide some ‘real world’ perspective around the use of blockchain for those who might wish to make investments in the space, beyond the generally understood cryptocurrency application (bitcoin and all the others). The three areas covered are fintech, supply chain management and media.
‘Touted as the defining technology of the next decade, blockchain is quickly moving beyond cryptocurrencies into many real-world applications that have tremendous value for the business world. As we’ve begun to witness, blockchain will expand its capabilities as a secure, anonymous, and decentralized technology into several industries, including the growth of cryptocurrencies, as we push further into the 21st century.’
So as we know, the adverb ‘quickly’ is a relative word, as an octogenarian may suggest to a millennial (or a fintech to a bank, for that matter), so one might question how quickly blockchain is moving into the real world, although its moving beyond cryptos is quite agreed. We have written about the potential blockchain uses and adoption points in a recent viewpoint Corporate Banking Now Peeking Through the Blockchain Window, which covers some of this referenced article’s focal points in detail.
Fintech is certainly all over the blockchain space, and some of the larger financial institutions have made substantial investments in the past couple of years through their venture capital arms (Citi in Chain, Cobalt; JPMC in Axoni, many banks in R3, etc) and IT budgets. There are even patents being filed by payments networks, such as the recent announcement about Amex vis-à-vis faster payments. For sure one of the major use cases is in support of the multi-layered supply chain management space, including the financing part.
‘Blockchain can provide the supply chain industry with a range of benefits, like optimizing transactions and trading relationships with secure networks; using a shared ledger that’s updated and validated in real time with each participant, to reduce fraud; allowing for equal and fair visibility of activities from the distributor, and revealing the location of a product at any point in time, as well as its current condition; improving inventory management, minimizing courier costs, reducing delays from paperwork, identifying issues faster, and increasing consumer and partner trust.’
The real question is when we will see industrial strength solutions with scale and earnings potential, in one or more of the mentioned use cases (we will stay away from media in this summary). It is coming, we think sooner than later (to keep relative terms alive).
I also found this following quote within the article interesting:
“As it turns out, your local plumber doesn’t really need to be online. There are services that you’d hope the plumber should be a part of, like promoting the business, but does your local plumber or locksmith need a fully responsive mobile website with videos and slideshows? No. And the same goes for blockchain. Not every industry needs to be an early adopter of this technology.”
Well, you know, other than the blockchain part, some plumbers may disagree, and maybe could use some help…check out this video
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
Read the quoted story here
