Cryptos have been on fire this year. Over the past 12 months, Bitcoin has skyrocketed over 500%. But what’s important here is bigger than just the value of the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin or Ripple prices. The most powerful aspect of digital currencies is their technology: blockchain.
Blockchain has moved to mainstream. Your life has already been affected and improved by blockchain. There’s a massive shift into blockchain from the biggest names in almost every industry.
Originally, blockchain technology was seen as an innovation that could be useful only in financial services. But now, we realize it is much more. In 2016, Walmart co-operated with IBM in a pilot project to protect its food supply chain process with blockchain. With 600 million cases of food-related illnesses each year, it’s important to be able to track down contaminated shipments. Walmart applied this tracking technology to find the origin of mangoes sold in its stores. This process used to take up to seven days. Using blockchain it took only 2.2 seconds. Because of this success, Walmart required suppliers of vegetables to use this blockchain-based tracking system starting in September 2019.
Amgen, Eli Lilly, and about 20 other healthcare companies have launched a similar project for prescription drugs to stop the dangerous spread of counterfeit medicines.
Chinese tech giant Tencent is investing in new infrastructure technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cybersecurity. Part of this is reserved for blockchain.
More than 75% of the Fortune 100 companies have already explored blockchain applications.
Companies across a wide range of industries begin shifting parts of their business to blockchain.
Bitcoin’s market capitalization has currently a value of around $1 trillion. But blockchain’s potential is much larger by a multiple. The global logistics and supply chain industry is only the first wave. Blockchain is already an integral part of everyday life but will have a more apparent impact, for example in medical records, ownership titles, etc.
Investors must understand the real value of Bitcoin is in the underlying technology: blockchain. Blockchain is already changing our world but that is just the start of it.
Sven Franssen