While there has been plenty of speculation regarding the advantages of blockchain technology and the vast possibilities it has for numerous organizations and industries, it has yet to break through the trepidation and into the mainstream.
So what can we expect in the near future? Let’s take a look.
Strengthening the Supply Chain
The overall benefits of blockchain are easy to see from afar — it’s decentralized and immutable, while the peer-to-peer ledger gives digital transactions a supreme upgrade on security, visibility, and traceability. This means that there are some very tantalizing benefits for the supply chain that are certain to entice many more to utilize blockchain technology, such as:
- Blockchain reduces cost by increasing transparency and responsiveness to levels formerly unattainable or incredibly expensive.
- Blockchain reduces brand damage and lost sales due to counterfeits by enabling the consumer to positively identify the brand manufacturer and immediately verify authenticity.
- Blockchain helps protect consumers as well as manufactures and brand reputation by enabling the ability to quickly trace product contamination to its source, reducing the chances of a costly mass recall.
- Blockchain provides an audit trail for all transactions.
- It is secure against undesired change.
- It provides easily verifiable and tamper-proof data.
- Blockchain provides faster transactions and near real-time data.
With these and even more benefits available along with some rather notable names and industry leaders either already onboard or taking the steps to change, it’s only natural that we’ll see many more organizations make the move to blockchain integration.
Medical & Legal Makeover
The inherent features of blockchain are destined to reshape the medical and legal professions and as those industries realize the cost savings and advantages for both them and their clients, you’re going to start seeing more widespread usage throughout. Blockchain provides the speed, privacy, security, and accuracy that these industries strive so hard for, yet currently pay high dollar to barely even come close to what’s readily available with blockchain.
From billing to PII and from contracts to closings, blockchains and smart contracts can provide the medical and legal professions with the exact structure they need. Once we see these two industries embrace the technology and implement it to the fullest extent of its capabilities, we’ll start seeing more organizations follow suit.
A HUGE Factor
While the blockchain benefits for the supply chain are indeed immense and game changing and with industries ranging from real estate to medicine and virtually everything in-between gaining numerous cost-saving advantages with blockchain and smart contracts, it won’t be long before we see more widespread adoption across multiple industries.
However, arguably the biggest hurdle that blockchain must overcome in order to become mainstream is the use of cryptocurrency.
While there are countless ICOs every month and billions of dollars in circulation via various cryptocurrencies, when it comes to actually using that currency to make purchases there is still a huge wall that consumers and merchants alike have been encountering.
Having a few hundred bucks worth of Ether or several thousand in Bitcoin is always nice of course, and jumping in on startups and spreading your investment around to a few ICOs can be fun. But as many have found, actually spending that currency can be a challenge.
Luckily, blockchain’s opportunity to gain more attention and movement into the mainstream is coming with companies like BlocPal that make the real-time usage of anycurrency simple, painless, and secure. Their infrastructure serves the entire spectrum: consumers, merchants, point-of-sale system operators, e-commerce platforms, financial apps, financial/banking institutions, and all stakeholders involved in payment processing.
Offerings like this is exactly what blockchain needs in order to truly go mainstream. The benefits of the technology are indeed enough to draw in numerous organizations and provide benefits for countless industries, but the fact remains that it will not be fully accepted into the mainstream until the use of cryptocurrency is as easy as traditional fiat and our more traditional industries fully implement the cost-saving and secure features of blockchain.
