The true value of the blockchain

I have known about the blockchain for a few years now. I actively started studying and using it this year. It is often being critized as being used for criminals and other such activities, which is a fools argument in my opinion.

The true value lies in its distributed nature of its database and that it can not be corrupted. It is in fact the internet 2.0. The biggest flaw of the internet was its copy nature which brought fraud and all kinds of other mistrust aspects, especially in the online trade department.

Why is it not very useful for criminals? Criminals… lets call them ‘smart people who have no respect for any law’. The blockchain and thereby it currencies are for now extremely volatile. Which is for any business person (good or bad) a headache, something you absolutely do not want unless you are a margin trader in which case this is your wet dream. You want some form of stability, even ‘smart people who have no respect for any law’. So better money laundry investment are houses, catering, the barter business and some other ventures.

So back to the blockchain why would be so valuable? What if because of a natural disaster you lost your house, even the bank had some troubles restoring their infrastructure. Maybe a cyber attack would take place. The blockchain would not be affected by any of this because there is no central entry point, it is all distributed. So that pension or that savings account of 350,000 euros could have been in the bank and because of circumstances you could not get access to the entire amount, because of policies and such. This would not be case the case in any bitcoin exchange and if you would want to go totally safe, you could store all your money in crypto currencies on a hardware wallet, which only you could get access to whenever you wanted.

For me, I’m not romantic or emotional about the blockchain. Actually I could care less about it. But I definitely see the advantages but also the downsides. The downsides being its technical aspect and thus it complexity, the advantage being its distributed nature, speed and its robust security.

Now some deep diving and visual examples:

This is the blockchain explained with an infographic

Why has the blockchain so much potential?

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Think about it, how the playing field of business would change if only 1 billion more people in the world would get access towards the same information you and I could use. In the end non-innovative monopolies or companies eventually would get destroyed because of competition and fast paced innovation, only the very best people would win. The world would not necessarily look better but a lot would change.

The effects of natural disasters have been seen by many people (online) and the after effects on a monetary bases are devastating and enormously time-consuming sometimes. Here is a reminder of what you potentially could lose if a natural disaster would occur.

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In my opinion the blockchain represents an opportunity of stability and security in a value based exchange. In a world were we currently have in way so little stability (looking at global events).