Blockchain for good!
So the title could mean 2 things Blockchain for good! It’s here to stay, or Blockchain for good, It’s here to help… Well actually this article means both I guess and it means both because a large part of it being here to stay is the fact I believe it will change the world for the better and will have a profound affect in most industries, From banking to farming to property and even healthcare, giving it the longevity people are debating currently — And VC’s throwing Billions in is always a good sign.
I love this quote specific to the financial sector.
“The governments of the world have spent hundreds and hundreds of trillions of dollars bailing out a decaying, Dickensian, outmoded system called banking, when the solution to the future of finance is peer-to-peer. It’s going to be alternative currencies like bitcoin and it’s not actually going to be a banking system as we had before 2008.”
- Patrick Young, Financial analyst
So this little piece is going to give you 5 alternative and what I think are really cool uses for Blockchain that you may not have seen!.
ELECTRICITY MARKET:
Literally POWER TO THE PEOPLE! Letting houses generate and sell their own electricity.
Instead of having a central power provider which sends electricity to everyone’s house and workplace, Imagine a distributed network, built on blockchain’s technology, that lets people generate their own electricity to sell on the network, using blockchain’s identifying tech to buy and sell to strangers.
The fact that all transactions are signed off by the network means you can’t get screwed over by a customer who goes back and says they didn’t buy from you — it’s right there in the blockchain records.
PROPERTY:
Cutting admin costs by keeping records on the blockchain. Put property records on the blockchain so that prospective buyers can quickly, easily, and cheaply verify that the owner of a house really does own the place. At present, this process is done manually. Not only is that costly, there’s also a greater chance of errors, which could add to costs.
Goldman Sachs research looked at the specific-use case in the US for something called title insurance, which is usually required by lenders issuing a mortgage to protect their interests.
DIGITAL VOTING:
The greatest barrier to getting electoral processes online, according to its detractors, is security. Using the blockchain, a voter could check that her or his vote was successfully transmitted while remaining anonymous to the rest of the world. In 2014, Liberal Alliance, a political party in Denmark, became the first Organization to use blockchain to vote. With American voter turnout still shockingly low, distributed digital voting may represent a way to enfranchise non-participants.
Last year a team accredited to observe the 2013 municipal elections in Estonia — the only country to run Internet voting on a wide scale — revealed that they observed election officials downloading key software over insecure Internet connections, typing PINs and passwords in view of cameras, and preparing election software on vulnerable PCs. Norway also canceled trials of e-voting systems in local and national elections, concluding that voters’ fears about their votes becoming public could undermine democratic processes. (Source: estoniaevoting.org)
TRANSPARENCY FOR CHARITIES & DONATIONS:
Social tech startup Alice has launched a new tool using blockchain technology that will show donors to charity exactly what impact their money makes.
The London-based startup is running a first appeal using the technology for homelessness charity St Mungo’s.
Alice works by “freezing” donations until charities can prove they have achieved their donation goals. The tools founders hope that this “will encourage more giving and support greater transparency in the third sector”.
This means that when donors give to a charity project on Alice, their donation is guaranteed to make an impact, or they get their money back.
Imagine a world where you can see where you money is being used and much less is lost in the Charity “food chain”
Music industry:
With the internet, musicians were promised that they would be able to break free of the record labels and sell their songs directly to their fans. Instead, their music got copied freely and is now streamed and it’s driven its value down to zero. With Blockchain, each song file can have its royalty and licensing rights built in. It can automatically trigger tiny micro payments for use and the artist can get paid first instead of last (if it all). Artist Imogen Heap is among the first musicians to start experimenting with Blockchain as a new model for music.
So next time you think of Blockchain, Don’t just think of banks, Financial services, and Fintech. It is here, It’s here to stay and it will cross over into every part of your life!.
