The most obvious use case is for financial services. Blockchain technology allows nearly instant transactions to take place from anywhere in the world, all at a very low cost since no intermediaries are required. For example, Swiss financial services
UBS Group are prioritizing the application of blockchain technology in order to reduce costs and allow their services to become more efficient. Blockchain is expected to cut up to $20 billion in middleman costs for financial institutions over the coming years.
Blockchain is also incredibly useful for protecting intellectual property, which is a huge benefit for content creators such as artists, writers, photographers, inventors, and designers. Kodak has already created a blockchain-based platform called
KodakOne that uses an encrypted, digital ledger of image rights that allows photographers to license their work and instantly get paid any time anyone uses their photos online.
Blockchain has the potential to make supply chains far more efficient and transparent, too. From food to pharmaceuticals to diamonds, blockchains allow industries to keep track of data on a public database to securely and efficiently verify when and where goods were manufactured, shipped, and sold.
This new technology can even be used for casting, tracking, and counting votes. Blockchain technology could literally be the end to voting fraud and corruption within elections around the world.
These examples merely scratch the surface of what blockchain technology is capable of. Plus, since the technology is so new, there’s many more use cases yet to be discovered. It still may be a while before blockchain gains mass adoption and becomes widely used by many different industries, but we can expect to see many more businesses continue to explore and implement blockchain in the years to come.