What's so Disruptive about Blockchain?

Video: What's so Disruptive about Blockchain? 

Blockchain - the 'Web on steroids'

In the early 1990s, the ‘Web’ introduced a number of extensions & new protocols that made the Internet far more powerful for the world of commerce. Similarly, Blockchain technologies have introduced a further set of extensions that enable the Internet to be arguably 10x-100x more valuable for global commerce. Together these new capabilities enable some to describe the Blockchain powered Internet as the ‘Web on steroids’.

In this article, I consider 3 of perhaps the most strategic capabilities that Blockchains introduce that are of significant strategic & commercial value, these are:

·     Global Peer-to-Peer transfers of financial value without using the existing ‘financial rails’ ((Europay/Visa/Mastercard, Swift, ACH) capable of running at more than 1 million transactions per second at a fraction of the current operating costs at minimal capital cost

·     Smart Contracts capable of automating the bulk of existing business processes across complex supply chains and intermediary enabled networks

·     Enabling the expected 20 billion IoT devices by 2020 to work, trade and contract with each other individually or combination without human involvment

The ‘Internet of Value’

Blockchains (and associated crypto-currencies (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Radix) provide the ability to send financial value peer-to-peer to any person or any IoT device anywhere on the planet, near instantly at miniscule cost (less than 1 cent per transaction) without the need for existing expensive ‘payment rails’ (Europay/Visa/Mastercard, Swift, ACH) or financial intermediaries.

This allows:

-      Billions of people in Emerging Markets around the world currently ‘under banked’ to trade peer to peer domestically and internationally at almost zero cost.

-      New cheaper faster alternatives to the established banking networks to emerge threatening today’s leading retail banks revenues & margins in multiple areas such as Money Transmission, Trade Finance, Merchant Services

-      A new financial infrastructure capable to support the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ whereby billions of IoT devices globally commence trading with each other at unprecedented volumes

Smart Contracts Automate the World!

Blockchains enable so called ‘Smart Contracts’ where software is shared globally and programmed to automate business transactions, processes and contracts.

Smart Contracts can fully automate complex business processes or complex Supply Chains without human involvement taking 50-99% of costs out of complex processes, eliminating costly mistakes and rework and enabling the work, trading and financial processing of complex global supply chains to be fully, 100%, automated at low cost and readily implemented.

The Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a trading reality across 20 billion devices

Gartner estimates that we will have over 20 billion IoT devices in place globally by 2020. Blockchain technologies enable these devices individually, or in combination, to fully trade, communicate and transact with each other automatically to thereby dramatically reshape global supply chains to deliver goods & services faster, cheaper & better than ever before.

The Web transformed the lives of billions of people and economies and the ability of commerce to fulfil people’s needs and desires better than ever before, Blockchain technologies promise if the potential bout to take this to a whole new level of sophistication and value creation globally.

Video: What's so Disruptive about Blockchain? 

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John Corr (Managing Director – Blockchain-X)

T: johnpcorr