The emergence of blockchain technology charted the path to advancements that various businesses implement in their operations today. Many people do not know though that the development of blockchain dates back to the early 1990s.
In 1991, Stuart Haber and W. Scott Tornetta began developing cryptographically secured chain of blocks that prevented documents and timestamps from getting tempered. These blocks were modified in 1992 by incorporating Merkle trees, which enabled a single block to store more documents.
Fast forward to 2008, Satoshi Nakomoto conceptualized the first blockchain, leading to the technology evolving and reaching other applications outside of cryptocurrencies. This also was followed by a whitepaper Satoshi published in 2009 that shared details on how the technology emphasized digital security and trust through decentralization.
After Satoshi Nakomoto's departure and turning Bitcoin over to other developers, the digital ledger made leaps in its functionality, making way for new applications that comprise blockchain.
Blockchain Revolutionizing Today's Businesses
Here are 10 ways on how blockchain will revolutionize modern businesses:
1. Improve your primary competencies
An early implementation of cryptocurrencies can enhance the primary competencies of your business. Through offering crypto-based payments, you can create more opportunities to attract new customers that are interested in cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies also possess the potential to overturn central currencies and even central bank digital currencies that governments plan to offer, which puts your business ahead of the competition.
2. Extra capital
The more capital a business has, the greater the capacity to run and expand its operations. By incorporating cryptocurrency, your business is given the advantage of acquiring more access to capital and liquidity pools.
The use of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) is one common method that enables large and startup businesses to grow their capital via cryptocurrency.
3. Inflation hedge
There is high volatility that often accompanies cryptocurrencies, but even with that, a lot of growth is seen in the market today. From here, cryptocurrency can be utilized by your business as a shield against inflation that sprouts from challenging economic and market conditions.
Even if it is one of the most volatile cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is the preferred inflation hedge among several people because of its limited supply and appeal when its true yield becomes closer to zero.
4. Better operations and treasury functions
Other than simplifying and speeding up crypto payments, your business can transition from the payments department by bringing in blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies to your operations as well as treasury functions.
5. A more efficient supply chain tracking
Making the shift to blockchain-based applications enables easier tracking of products and goods as they go through different stages of the supply chain. By having the capacity to monitor suppliers in real-time, your business can reduce human errors in updating data combined with the use of smart contracts for payments, enhancing the global supply chain industry.
Having a more efficient supply chain also means your business can focus on reducing other costs and streamlining processes such as production.
Big names such as Walmart and other well-known corporations have already shifted to blockchain in tracking their supply chains.
British Airways is also another company that has infused blockchain technology into their operations, and it is used to coordinate and monitor flight data between London, Miami, and Geneva's airports.
6. Low transaction fees
Every day, businesses make multiple transactions of all sorts. Credit card payments are currently the norm in making business transactions, but the downside is that they come with high transaction fees.
Adopting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for your business transactions means you will pay much lower transaction costs compared to using credit cards or other payment methods from banks and other financial institutions.
7. Increased decentralization
The beauty of blockchain-enabled crypto transactions is that they do not require a third party or central authority. From there, your business is provided with a window to become more decentralized, which means nobody will be tracking your data except for the sender and receiver.
8. Less opportunities for fraud
While traditional card payments can be reversed via a chargeback feature, it is not the same for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency payments because they cannot be reversed. Knowing that each transaction made with cryptocurrencies is securely recorded, a long-term audit trail can be employed to track down these transactions as well as verify their authenticity.
Thanks to the availability of long-term audit trails, all transactions made has greater audibility and accountability, which aids in tremendously reducing fraudulent transactions from taking place. In addition, this feature can also be used to monitor other assets, allowing your business to build a database of various information types regarding these assets.
9. Fast and secure transactions
One of blockchain and cryptocurrencies' primary advantages is the ability to make immediate, safe, and easy transactions, which increases your business's efficiency. It can take a day or even longer for credit and debit card transactions to be fully processed, but crypto transactions can be processed instantly.
Crypto transactions are also kept secure and private, as financial intermediaries such as banks will not keep record of them. For extra confidentiality, you also do not have to provide sensitive information or other means of authentication such your driver's license, passport, or any other government-issued IDs.
10. Cross-border payments
Using cryptocurrencies can benefit your business by narrowing down cross-border payments, which, in the long-run, minimizes barriers to international trade. As an effect, other businesses can accept payments via cryptocurrencies from customers all over the globe.
Meshing cryptocurrencies does not just strengthen your business's global prospects, but also equips you with major competitive advantage.
Taking the Right Steps to Modernizing Business Processes
Businesses continue evolving their operations to enhance their efficiency. There are many use cases of blockchain that can help you understand how to improve your business's operations. Blockchain technology and digital money have advanced significantly from their early uses as a means of payment and a source of passive income. It now has a much more significant impact than that, having a revolutionary role in contemporary businesses.
Adaptability is also essential to businesses progressing. Whether studying ecommerce business models or learning how to approach a business venture for blockchain development, the most important thing is knowing which strategies will help grow your business for long-term success.
