We see the stories every day. Feds charge 21 people in global crypto money laundering bust. FTX not only filed for bankruptcy, but hackers allegedly stole customer assets. Cryptocurrency investors have lost more than $2 trillion in the past year.
Given such headlines, one can be forgiven for viewing cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency trading negatively. Moreover, the tremendous amount of energy required for bitcoin mining also may add to one’s skepticism, given the very real impact of climate change. But one should remember that cryptocurrency represents just a small subset of distributed ledger technology (DLT). As such, people, businesses and governments must be extremely careful not to dismiss the vast potential blockchain offers humanity as a whole.
What Is Blockchain?
At its most basic, blockchain is about how both digital and real assets get moved from one person or one place to the next without the need for a costly, intrusive third party to facilitate the process. While the creation of distributed ledger technologies that make blockchain work was applied first to the movement of money, giving rise to cryptocurrency, blockchain can be used for any asset by creating a digital replica of a real object and performing the necessary action in real time.
How Blockchain Benefits Society
The world has already benefited heavily from the power and elegance of blockchain. For example, at the height of the pandemic, with millions of people in desperate need of effective Covid-19 vaccines, our company created an intelligent vaccine tracking system using blockchain to ensure frictionless distribution of life-saving immunizations around the globe under extreme temperature control. This not only ensured vaccines got to the people who needed them around the world in record time, but reduced costs that governments had to pay pharmaceutical companies to purchase them since the blockchain tracking system helped limit the number of spoiled vaccines that had to be thrown out due to exposure to too much heat or cold.
Consumers have also benefited from enterprise blockchain as it helps businesses streamline processes and operations, efficiencies that ultimately get passed on to consumers. One of the biggest challenges arising out of the pandemic was disrupted supply chains, which even today continues to lead to shortages and rising costs for essential products like milk, toilet paper and baby formula. DLT technologies are also being used to protect consumers' health by tracking where produce and other food come from to improve food safety. Indeed, 12 of the biggest global food companies have already adopted the use of blockchain to track food in the world, including Walmart, Nestle, Unilever, Tyson Food, Driscoll's and Dole.
Blockchain is also being used to improve the travel industry. For example, Australian-based Webjet is using its blockchain platform to help avoid inaccurate or lost hotel bookings. This provides more transparency for customers and greater accountability on behalf of hotels.
And identity management is no stranger to blockchain-based solutions. In a time and place when data and privacy are so important to users, blockchain allows them to control their personal information through a distributed trust model. We're slowly starting to see an influx of blockchain-based identity management startups flooding the sector, and the blockchain identity management market is projected to reach nearly $18 billion by 2030.
While it is still too soon to know the full impact of the cryptocurrency meltdown, educating ourselves about how new technologies like blockchain work, their benefits and the potential for abuse remains our best line of defense. It is also the best way for us to identify and unlock the full potential of distributed ledger technologies to solve some of today’s most complex problems.
Article resource: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/02/14/how-blockchain-technology-is-changing-the-world/?sh=acb938c13972
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