There is so much focus on buying and trading in cryptocurrency that people tend to forget about the backbone. What I mean is that it is all about the blockchain and the technology that works for multiple systems.
Because there is so much money to be made and lost with the coins, it overshadows the technology that makes it all possible.
There is still quite some catching up to do regarding its potential vs current reality. For now the cloud is still ahead of blockchain. Yet, there are still some applications where the blockchain is making headway.
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Here are some of the things the blockchain is already doing.
Payment processing
One of the most attractive aspects of the blockchain is how transparent and secure the ledger is. So it makes sense that payment processing would find a home on the blockchain.
Without a middleman like a bank or financial institution, payments are fast and there is less vulnerability during the transaction. To make use of this, you’ll need to find out where to buy Bitcoin. After that, you can use your digital wallet to make online payments with ease and safety.
Supply chains
The blockchain is able to make supply chains far more efficient. The Internet of Things combined with the blockchain is a match made in Heaven when it comes to monitoring supply chain logistics. From analysing the transactions to quality control of the products in transit, it can help to spt inefficiencies quickly.
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Data sharing
A lot of enterprise data goes unused so the blockchain can be a good marketplace to share and sell any unused data.
Cryptocurrency IOTA has created a marketplace on the blockchain that stores and sells that data.
Copyright protection
Since the ledger on the blockchain cannot be altered, it is a logical place to register any copyright for art, data or intellectual property in general. This ensures that the people that stand to receive royalties for use of their property get paid.
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The entire process of royalty distribution is transparent so there is a clear line from creation of a product to the payment at the end of the transaction.
Voting
With voter fraud and voting machines malfunctioning on people’s minds lately, the blockchain is a logical place to register votes. Once again it is the fact that the ledger cannot be altered. Votes cannot be changed after the fact by the software in the voting machine since any change in the ledger would be seen immediately.
It is poetic that the democratic nature of the blockchain would be used to shore up the weak links in our democracy and make it stronger.
Better data backup
Where the cloud has proven to come up short, the blockchain can live up to the promise of a safer way to back up data. Since the cloud is essentially just a server somewhere, it is vulnerable to getting hacked.
The blockchain is serverless with the chain being located on hundreds or thousands of computers all over the world. Data can’t be hacked because it would be impossible to hack into thousands of individual computers.