Blockchain Is Disrupting Businesses Around the Globe

The acceptance and disruption of blockchain technology, the most significant invention since the internet, are comparable. The potential influence blockchain could have in the future is incalculable, only comparable to something so revolutionary as the internet.

Decentralization, public ledgers, and genuine asset ownership are the three main components of a blockchain. This has various implications, but the corporate world has been hidden from regular investors for far too long due to centralization and opacity.

The Financial Industry

A few significant issues in traditional finance can be resolved by blockchain. The safety of networks comes first, then the absence of a global financial system. The largest problem of centralization, control, and genuine ownership sits on top of them. Recent "trucker rally" protests in Canada resulted in the government choosing to block, freeze, and restrict the bank accounts of everyone taking part in the nonviolent demonstration. While families at home saw their own accounts become locked for transferring money to protesting loved ones, businesses participating in the action saw their corporate finances stopped. It is also common practice in nations like China and Russia to seize control of bank accounts.

From the total amount of money in circulation to account access to the actual cash we place into our accounts, the government and banks have ultimate control over our money. Banks operate by taking your money and investing it as though you were lending it to them. They then return to you less than 0.1% of the interest collected, keeping somewhere between 3 and 25% for themselves. Why not hold and invest your own money and keep all the returns after learning how banks operate as opposed to obtaining less than 0.1%?

Financial inclusion is seriously deficient in many developing nations. Take El Salvador as an illustration. A significant part of the reason they decided to adopt Bitcoin as legal cash nationwide was the fact that around 70% of people lack access to banks. Without credit ratings, loans and mortgages, debit cards, and general financial access, any country's economy will lag well behind that of the more developed world by years. This is difficult to comprehend from a first-world country. El Salvadoreans couldn't send money digitally before embracing the bitcoin ecosystem, and they couldn't even get a loan to establish a business or purchase a house.

Due to money printing and weak monetary policy, other nations' currencies, such as those of Venezuela and Turkey, have fallen in value at astronomically rapid rates. Videos of people burning cash and using it to create fashion designs have gone viral, demonstrating how little value there is in actual money. Around the world, centralized organizations have control over the cash supply, the laws governing it, and the power to close and freeze bank accounts.

Decentralization and the openness of a public ledger are undeniably preferable alternatives to the current global financial system with blockchain, notably Bitcoin. A predefined, fixed supply and a predetermined monetary policy governing how Bitcoin operates. This means that until all 21 million Bitcoin are distributed, no one in the world will be able to alter the monetary policy governing bitcoin.

Nobody can create additional Bitcoin and release it into the system, which would lower its value. Nobody can access your funds using a private cold wallet without knowing your seed phrase. Blockchain technology and bitcoin are available everywhere on earth and can provide banking services to unbanked areas.

The Defi (Decentralized Finance) area is highly represented on the layer one Ethereum blockchain. Aave is a typical dApp (decentralized application) running on the Ethereum network. With Aave, users may borrow and lend cryptocurrency very instantaneously and without the need for middlemen or bank approvals. Holding 10 ETH on the Aave platform will give you a loan of 2–5 ETH in less than two minutes.

This is far faster and handier than a real bank and gives you the advantage of using the purchasing power of your assets without actually selling them. There are defi solutions for asset exchanges, asset sales, and decentralized exchanges. You can buy cryptocurrency using these DEXs instead of centralized intermediaries like Robinhood or Coinbase.

Banking & P2P Transactions

Due to the major problems with remittances in the late 2000s and early 2010s, many early adopters of Bitcoin chose to use digital currency. Remittances are payments that are frequently made between people in exchange for products or services. Many immigrants discovered that using their banks and other conventional methods to send money home to their relatives is time- and money-consuming. People immediately looked for alternatives after learning they were frequently charged 15-20%+ of the transaction price.

Because of its low transaction fees and speedy processing times, early adopters of Bitcoin fell in love with the decentralized technology. Even in 2022, crypto will still be able to address issues with cost, cost-effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, security, and trust in typical payment applications.

Remittances and bank settlements are somewhat comparable, however, bank and financial institution money transfers, frequently on a worldwide scale and involving multiple currencies, are the focus of bank settlements. Banks have difficulty with these transactions since they tie up funds on their balance sheets and can take more than a week to complete. The length of time it takes to transfer money has a significant impact on the amount of capital invested in the market and, consequently, the overall profits of the banks.

XRP is one instance of a cryptocurrency that addresses bank settlements and remittances. The Ripple Labs coin can speed up transactions worth billions of dollars while only paying a small portion of the going rate. Large financial institutions frequently face serious issues, however, transactions frequently execute at less than 0.01% of the transaction amount.

Company & Individual Branding

New branding opportunities are presented by Web3 and blockchain technology. NFTs and smart contracts provide a wide range of options for growing a business's customer base, boosting sales, and fostering brand loyalty. When specified conditions are met, smart contracts are programs that are specifically made to automatically carry out a series of orders. A smart contract, typically between two parties, gets rid of the requirement for a middleman and the necessary level of confidence for online communication and transactions.

The primary purpose of these smart contracts is to "mine" fresh NFTs that are not yet in circulation. NFTs are the major advancement in branding, although smart contracts currently have greater applications in business and supply chain management.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are frequently accompanied by images. They rapidly grew in size due to the image factor. While it is far simpler to understand something that you can really see, many people have difficulties understanding blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.

Brands can provide their devoted customers NFTs in exchange for benefits like discounts, first access to particular products, and more. This is a fantastic way for a company to honor its most devoted consumers. In order to increase brand trust among all customers, NFTs can also be utilized to prove the authenticity of an item whose legitimacy is in dispute.

Currently, using NFTs would mostly be a marketing tactic for increasing traffic and client base through brand awareness, innovation, and the physical branding of the NFT's appearance. Every time a brand's NFT is traded, royalties can be earned, giving them a second stream of income. The best aspect is that these NFT branding methods have very low overhead and are cost-effective for businesses of all sizes.

B2B & Supply Chains

Since the COVID lockdowns, we have all been dealing with supply chain problems that are prevalent globally. Businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to manage supply chains on the necessary scale, which results in shortages, empty shelves, disgruntled customers, and a loss of profit. This occurs in part due to the time required to manually update inventories and accounting, which is a laborious and time-consuming operation. The rare imbalance in supply and demand is another factor that causes this. The supply chains become congested when demand increases for a product whose production has been halted or slowed.

Smart contracts can be used to automate the process of updating inventories and to perform those instantaneous, simple transactions. One of the most astute things a business can do behind the scenes is to put its products on the blockchain. Tracking, analyzing, and managing inventory from anywhere in the globe is made easier by tying NFTs and other blockchain-based assets to tangible, real-world goods.

Data Storage

Although the majority of us may not have much knowledge of data storage, we do know that a small number of extremely powerful and significant multinational organizations store the vast majority of the world's data. The tech behemoths Google, Facebook, and Apple are among those who store personal data and benefit from its sale.

Decentralized data, including real-time decentralized data feeds and decentralized query layers, has been made possible by the blockchain. Most notably, businesses like Chainlink, Storj, and The Graph revolutionized the data market.

As an oracle, Chainlink enables blockchains and decentralized applications (dApps) to receive real-time data that has been compiled from many sources that have been determined to be reliable. In essence, Chainlink would use the responses from the most reliable websites and quickly send that information to you if you needed to know "Did the Red Sox win last night?".

A decentralized storage cabinet called Storj was designed. It provides a method for completely decentralized file storage. Files are divided up into "shards" and anonymously distributed to various nodes throughout the network using the Storj protocol. When you come to pick up your file, these nodes eventually come together to put it back together.

Like Google, The Graph has indexing and querying layer. It resembles a search engine in many ways, but without data collection and advertising. Developers contribute to the network by indexing blockchains, and users can quickly query and browse blockchain data.

These services and protocols provide decentralized versions of the tools we already use, and they continue to improve on a daily basis.

The Gaming Industry

One of the biggest and fastest-growing industries today, video games are played by close to three billion people annually. The issue is that, despite the fact that they require time or money to get, in-game assets are not owned. One of the most well-known first-person shooting games, Call of Duty, lets you buy extra maps or locations to unlock, earn more powerful weapons through gameplay, and even use specific perks, or character attributes, to your advantage.

The Call of Duty (COD) business model is used by all production teams in the video game industry. Blockchain is establishing an ownership-based ecosystem in the gaming industry. In P2E, or play-to-earn, games, users can acquire cryptocurrency tokens by taking part in in-game activities, progressing in the game, or finishing certain tasks. In this, the possibility of earning money while playing video games is introduced.

Players that invest time or money into their games are given possibilities in this web-3 gaming ecosystem, which is centered around ownership. Imagine being able to put in a lot of effort over the course of a weekend to unlock a certain map or weapon, and then being able to sell that thing for real money on a public market.

Microsoft has teamed with Enjin, a blockchain-based cryptocurrency firm. Enjin released a Minecraft NFT, a browser-based game with Microsoft in 2021 and is seeking to get NFT-based marketplaces for video game developers. The new endeavor "demonstrates a potential interoperability between numerous platforms, applications, and games," according to Microsoft. Microsoft is a significant player in the video game industry, and its acquisition of Activision Blizzard earlier this year significantly strengthened its already sizable gaming portfolio. The Xbox gaming system, Forza, Minecraft, Fallout, Halo, and numerous other titles are all produced by Microsoft.

Ultimately, Microsoft and Enjin want to make this breakthrough available to everyone on the planet. Enjin was founded with the goal of connecting game developers and titles to NFT marketplaces, transforming in-game assets into actual assets that might be traded for real money. Why shouldn't you be able to sell a map or a weapon you buy in a video game to a friend? Given that you bought it, shouldn't you be able to use it whatever you please?

The Art Industry

NFTs have given artists from all different backgrounds a very special opportunity. NFTs assist artists in creating a brand for themselves and a fanbase for their work. Every time a piece of the artist's creation is sold again, NFTs pay the artist royalties. The blockchain makes counterfeiting virtually impossible, protecting artists from dealing with fraud.

The traditional art market does not provide artists with many chances to build their brands or find alternate sources of income. NFTs give artists a genuine method to connect with their collectors and create a community around the work they are passionate about.

It's difficult to ignore how many significant, established sectors are embracing innovation thanks to blockchain. The potential value of blockchain is 100 billion dollars, and eventually, a trillion-dollar asset class. Technology this disruptive, innovative, and powerful shouldn't be disregarded and doesn't occur frequently.

Blockchain Usage

Only the early internet days and even those that are hardly comparable can be used to compare blockchain usage and adoption. The rate of adoption over the previous few years has increased more than ever, with 42% of those between the ages of 18 and 34 and 21% of the 1,000 people surveyed in 2021 reporting some level of expertise with cryptocurrencies. Even as prices decline, adoption increases, especially among younger people.

Blockchain networks, applications, and protocols are increasingly being used, and this trend doesn't appear to be slowing down. The number of active wallets on the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks both exceeded one million. Over 40 million people use Coinbase, likely the biggest US-based exchange, and three million of those people invest actively each month.

Blockchain is slowly disrupting industries around the globe, and shaping the future, are you paying close enough attention?

For media, content, or writing inquiries please contact Patrick Hagerty at [email protected]

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