You have likely heard about blockchains and how they power cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Blockchain technology is more than a foundation for digital currencies. This decade-old tech can be used for various applications to significantly and positively impact our lives.
It can disrupt the norm of certain interactions involving a transaction, contract, or confidentiality. Let’s look at some of the ways blockchain could impact our lives in the coming years.
Healthcare Systems
The current state of medical records in healthcare computer systems is fragile. Healthcare systems are private and do not cooperate with other systems in the name of patient confidentiality.
This centralization is one of the main reasons why records are lost, and patients are sometimes billed incorrectly for healthcare services. Blockchain can distribute healthcare and medical records on several systems while ensuring patient confidentiality and eliminating the risk of tampering.
Blockchain in healthcare could securely store your entire medical history and provide convenient access with your permission, wherever required. Fraud and tampering would become almost impossible because they leave a traceable trail like everything else on a blockchain.
Supply Chains
One of the most significant impacts blockchain can have is on supply chains. Blockchain technology can enable accurate tracking of goods throughout supply chains, enabling ethical consumption and fair trade of goods.
We can eliminate inefficiencies and ensure nobody is exploited in the supply chain. Forced labor, blood diamonds, and even contamination outbreaks would become a thing of the past because blockchains can track every step of supply chains immutably.
Finance Sector
Blockchain can streamline the entire financial sector. From taxes to insurance records, investment records, credit cards, and daily transactions, everything can be improved and made efficient through blockchain technology.
Currently, when you swipe your credit card, the payment goes through 4 separate stages, costing up to 3 percent or more in processing fees. Blockchain can change and simplify this with cryptocurrencies, to bring costs down to almost nothing.
Popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are becoming widely accepted. Even multinational retailers and financial institutions like Visa are evolving to make digital currencies an acceptable mode of payment.
Real Estate Market
Title insurance is one of the many closing costs in any real estate deal. It provides coverage in case your title search does not reveal everything. If someone turns up with proof to claim the property later, or you discover that your sale documents were forged, title insurance makes sure that you are insured.
Blockchain can improve home ownership and eliminate the need for title insurance. It can record an immutable title registry, where everything is recorded securely, including how the property changes ownership.
In a similar vein, blockchain could eliminate any confusion or mysteries about inheritance or wills. It would be almost impossible for anyone to tamper with someone’s will on the blockchain. The assets or inheritance could automatically be distributed to the right benefactors when that person passes away.
Of course, with blockchain adoption, there are still many problems to overcome and many things to consider, especially those we may not foresee. There are even scaling and environmental concerns, which are actively being improved on. Even harnessing the smallest potential of blockchain technology can have a hugely positive impact on our lives.