Catalyzing The Growth Of BlockChain

Digitalized, Secure, Encrypted, Currency — Simplified

Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency have played a pivotal role in guiding today’s financial generation in the economic aspects of the world. Blockchain is nothing but a decentralized database that is stored on multiple computers in the form of identical copies. The fact that the nature of a blockchain is that it is decentralized and that no single user can alter or remove an entry from it, is what makes it highly secure. One of the reasons why blockchain technology is used for cryptocurrency is because of its highly encrypted and secure nature.

What a lot of people don’t know is that bitcoin is not the only way blockchain technology can be utilized. Honestly, the limits of blockchain technology are beyond our imagination and I’m not exaggerating. Currently, there are a huge number of banks that are experimenting with blockchain to make the services more secure, seamless, and transparent. Even though blockchain technology has opened up so many areas for us there are a lot of people who are absolutely unaware of what it is, how it works, and what its potential is. Blockchain can potentially change how our industry works, whether we talk about healthcare, banking, cybersecurity, cloud storage etcetera.  

The CEO of IBM rightly said, “What the internet did for information, blockchain will do for transactions”

Just to give you a brief, Blockchain is nothing but a decentralized set of ledgers of various transactions across a peer-to-peer network. Now, cryptocurrency as we know is based on blockchain and is basically turning around the traditional financial system through this technology. Bitcoin is probably the most common digital currency that almost everyone has heard of.

How does a transaction work on cryptocurrency?

Every time a transaction occurs, that transaction is put into a block. Each block is connected to one before that, and that one, to the one before that and before that, and in this way an irreversible chain is formed.

Now, why does it work so well? Well, there are a lot of reasons why blockchain works so well. First of all, it requires validation of each transaction that is made which makes it very secure and reliable and God knows we need something that is secure and reliable in today’s world. Second of all and one of the major highlights is that we don’t need a third-party involvement because it basically works as a peer-to-peer transaction.

Blockchain technology is consistent, accurate, quick, unambiguous, and available everywhere. We don’t need to go through thousands and thousands of pointers, rules, and regulations just to know the required procedures. And the process and ways of working do not differ from country to country.

Blockchain is the next big thing, no doubt about that. There are about three times more jobs now, related to blockchain than there were 5 years ago as per Linkedin. The ICO investments have increased 16 times. There are 14 countries that are exploring and developing the potential of blockchain and cryptocurrency. I think it is high time we impart education regarding the same too. There are so many ways by which we can use blockchain technology, there are companies that are already using blockchains. For example, FedEx has launched a pilot program to help solve customer disputes, Walmart is helping customers streamline the restocking process, and many more.

It’s about time that developing countries catalyze the growth of blockchain. There are a lot of ways by which blockchain technology can benefit the country some of them are —

• Digital identity and passports

If we use Blockchain for digital identity and passwords it will prevent the creation of fake identities and additionally reduce the burden of paperwork to a bare minimum.

• Used in the voting system

Blockchain can help to counterfeit the manipulation of the wards during the elections (in some countries) and well, we all know that is something that can benefit the country largely, for quite a few reasons

• Cloud Storage

Shifting from a centralized storage system to a decentralized network is something that could benefit the new era of cloud storage.

• Smart contracts

Won’t it be amazing if we buy and sell goods and services without having to pay any kind of commission to third parties? well, that is exactly how blockchain will help us in creating smart contracts. We can make use of smart contracts and buy and sell goods and services without paying commissions to any kind of third parties.

• Internet of Things

The IoT application development will also be able to contribute to the transactional data of blockchain’s cybersecurity. If we inculcate blockchain into our business and into the various platforms that we might use, then it will help businesses to protect themselves from being hacked.

I personally feel that the secure nature of blockchain technology is what is going to benefit the world the most today. We crave privacy, it is as simple as that. The transactions are going to be highly secured and streamlined and I think that the way the financial and banking system works, is completely going to change. Healthcare is the second industry that I believe is going to benefit the most. Because of the transparency, security, and automation that blockchain offers it can be a really effective way to transfer knowledge, reports, and data between the patient and the hospital, the patient and the Doctor, and Doctor to Doctor.

Blockchain is definitely going to save a lot of money in the bigger picture, and remove a lot of redundancy of work, a lot of mismanagement, and quality depreciation. But right now, like any other new revolution this comes at a price too, but lucky for us it is going to be worth every penny.

There are a lot of expenses they would incur in the process of inculcating the blockchain technology —

Starting with the cost of replacement — Obviously, replacing an entire system that was in place is going to be a lot of work and the initial investment and the cost of opting for an alternate technology i.e replacing the traditional technology is going to cost a huge amount of money, not to forget the cost of training the employees and the cost of maintaining the technology.

But here we have to understand that the benefits of incorporating blockchain technology into the system are going to be far more significant. Blockchain works better when there is a large ecosystem of market players with a high amount of transactions. This process is initially going to involve a significant amount of investment in terms of time, effort, and money. Nurturing the system into a larger ecosystem and building ecosystem solutions are going to be cumbersome, competitive, and highly drastic points of action involving solutions, processes, suppliers, and customers.

If we talk about the benefits that we are going to enjoy, well, then the biggest ones would be the reduction of fraud-related costs, followed by the reduction of manpower. Whether you talk about the redundancy of work or manual confirmations or reconciliation of efforts, there would always be a quantum of work, money, and efforts involved here. On the other hand with a blockchain system in place, there would be a reduction of capital costs and a reduction of cycle time which will result in less capital i.e baselining the capital loss and estimation of the same. I mean, the digitalization of manual processes, which will prevent errors. Additionally, digitalization benefits such as the byproduct technology would also be a very quantitative benefit that we can get out of blockchain technology.

Blockchain is being treated as a luxury or novelty today and it is difficult for people to understand it initially and how it works. But in the long run, it’s going to be something that is beneficial for the world.

Today the way we think of blockchain is exactly how the internet was treated back in 1990 and look at us now! look at the use of the internet !! look at the expansion of the internet! We survived a pandemic because of the internet. 10 years from now Blockchain is going to be the next Internet and I think this is the most accurate time to utilize it and make something out of it. The growth of blockchain technology is going to be enormous and it’s time that we catalyze this growth.