Blockchain is one of the most promising new technologies of the future. This distributed ledger technology, that is cryptographically protected runs some of the most popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
Blockchain technology provides a way to record and transfer data that’s transparent , safe and audible by others. This creates a huge trust among people when it comes to transferring assets from one person to the other.
The Blockchain technology is starting to disrupt many industries. This disruption will happen slowly from today and span into the next 5 to 8 years.
Let’s walk you quickly through some of the industries that Blockchain will disrupt in the next half a decade.
Insurance
The insurance market is purely based on trust management. Blockchain puts this core aspect of the insurance companies right in the middle of a ton of use cases that can disrupt the insurance industry.
Blockchain can be used to verify many types of data in insurance contracts. Like the identity of the person, how their record has been and how much the company can trust them. Insurance companies are going to rely heavily on a contract system called Smart Contracts. Smart Contracts relies on real-world data, which is exactly what the insurance companies also rely on.
Ride sharing and transportation
The transportation industry saw a major disruption when Uber launched across the world. The company proved a point that people are okay with sharing a ride in someone else’s car. The next big disruption is happening in the same ride-sharing space, but now, Blockchain is at the core of this disruption.
Blockchain enabled apps will bring in a huge amount of trust between two parties who are okay with sharing a ride. These two parties can arrange terms and conditions in a secure, efficient and trustworthy way without any intermediaries. This means that, people don’t need a company like Uber to enable this ride for them. Instead, they just need someone to enable this technology for them. People will be able to pay for their parking, tolls, and much more using this technology.
Voting
This is the most important area where Blockchain can be put to use. We’ve already seen the dirty political plays that many country leaders have done to be the Prime Minister or the President. There needs to be a system that’s transparent, anonymous and secure that exposes all the data of who is getting the most votes. An electronic vote counting enabled by Blockchain can enable this legitimacy with the people. No votes can be changed if moved with this technology.
Healthcare
This industry has been relying on old technologies for a long time, and this literally needs to be pushed to being disrupted. One of the biggest challenges that hospitals face today is the lack of a secure platform to store and retrieve patient data. Hospitals are pretty easy to hack when compared to other places, since the industry tends to invest pretty less in technology and stick to the legacy ones forever.
Blockchain can allow hospitals to safely store data like never before. The records are shared with authorized personnel and patients directly. This will improve data security and will even prove the accuracy and speed at which the diagnosis happens at hospitals.
Online music
There are a ton of apps and platforms that enables musicians to get paid directly from their fans without the intervention of any third-party. This mode of transfer can be improved with a technology like Blockchain.
Smart Contracts can be used to automatically solve licensing issues and better organize and catalog songs for the artists.
Real estate
The major issue in real-estate is bureaucracy, lack of transparency and mistakes in public records. Blockchain technology can solve all of these issues and speed up transactions to a large extent. Since the ledger is public, the needs for paper based authorization can be reduced to a humongous extent. It can also be used to track, verify the ownership of the property, assuring the accuracy of the information that is being transferred.
Finally, your very own industry
Any industry that is involved in transmitting data or information of any kind can be improved with Blockchain. The space is super wide open and the opportunities are countless.
We’ve seen over the years that companies who adopt to the new technologies and keep pushing themselves over their competition survive. If you fall under any of these industries, especially the last one, you should move to Blockchain - chances are that your competitor is already on it, and trying to crush you!