Demystifying Blockchain Technology

Blockchain is an exciting new technology with huge potential to disrupt and improve numerous industries. It has sparked a lot of questions around what it is, how it works, and how it will impact procurement and supply chain. With continued investment and research in blockchain technology, many businesses are beginning to see the benefits that blockchain offers and are considering the adoption of the technology. It is one of the most disruptive technologies in the modern digital economy and is on the verge of impacting many industries. one major challenge that blockchain faces today is scalability. Nonetheless, blockchain can be a revolutionary solution to combat data breaches and protect data privacy.

Investment in blockchain has grown exponentially and continues to expand across industries. According to the IDC report, by 2022, spending is expected to soar to $11.7 billion, amounting to a five-year compounded annual growth rate of 73% from 2017 to 2022. Even these statistics may understate blockchain’s eventual impact. According to Christian Catalini (MIT) and Joshua Gans (University of Toronto), blockchain has key features of a General-Purpose Technology (GPT), defined as “technologies that can spur economic growth over the long run and have substantial and pervasive impact on the society across multiple industries, such as steam engine, electricity and internet.”

As business operations and offerings are substantially enabled through various crucial accomplishments and advancements in the IT field, business executives across the globe are equally keen to experiment with and embrace this new and futuristic technology to reap a slew of business benefits. Interestingly, blockchain has the inherent potential and promise to bring forth a bevy of strategically sound implications for various industry verticals.

Cryptocurrency is one of the finest and foremost applications of blockchain technology. One of the key benefits of blockchain is its ability to reduce the time and cost of verification. Enabling verification across the increasingly global and interconnected networks of buyers, sellers and other parties can be costly. Fortunately, as long as data is entered correctly, verification with blockchain can often be accomplished without additional resources such as costly third parties. Securely recording and time-stamping each transaction builds a reliable foundation and validates subsequent actions.

From real estate transactions to complex supply-chain management, blockchain not only reduces costs but also adds accuracy and accountability by preserving immutable, time-stamped records of all transactions.