What do cannabis, wills, charity, and voting have in common? Well, the fact that blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt all of these industries, and more.
The future of blockchain is near and is promising. Financial services like banking aren’t the only ones affected. What started as the basis for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, blockchain – the digital ledger that verifies and records digital transactions – is now gaining ground across increasingly more countries as they’re seeking to understand cryptographic, decentralised payments.
Bitcoin’s success helped demonstrate blockchain’s application in finance, but more industries could use it to their advantage. From wills to trucking, here are six sectors that blockchain can help evolve.
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Wills and inheritances
Would you like to wake up knowing you’ve inherited Bitcoins instead of traditional money? Let’s understand how that would be.
Bitcoin is the most popular and widely traded cryptocurrency. It has a limit of 21 million Bitcoins, and no more can be created. There are two possibilities: its value either grows when it reaches that limit, assuming it keeps on being in demand, or it does not.
The first thing you should do is check the Bitcoin price and determine whether you want to buy more Bitcoin, trade it, sell it, store it in the hope it will boom someday, or pass on wealth to your kids.
Wills are an exact type of contract, giving a great use case for a blockchain smart contract solution. Besides the need to analyse the deceased’s actual death, will-related litigation typically entails challenges to the “genuineness” of the document – that is, if the legal interpretation coincides with the giver’s wish.
While blockchain technology will only partially eliminate these challenges, it will make it simpler to dismiss claims without merit, provide verifiable transaction data, and identify factual information.
Pharma
The pharmaceutical sector isn’t famed for being a fast-moving industry. Despite the industry’s focus on problem-solving and innovation, many forms, rules, and procedures lack sense, and there is a lot of red tape around FDA approvals and clinical testing.
Regarding such problems, the blockchain ledger can step in and create a more efficient system, opening the door for the following:
- Smarter medical data security
- Better-regulated production
- Faster innovation.
This innovative technology can also enforce safer drug production. How? When mistakes are made, they may be caught and traced back to the source, helping prevent recalls. Additionally, manufacturers may contact retailers ASAP to reduce the impact of unsafe drugs on businesses’ finances and patients’ health.
In 2017, for example, Chronicled launched the MediLedger Network. The project included several collaborators: drug supply chain giants and large drum companies. It made use of a blockchain-based system to verify pharmaceutical returns by tracking who touched what drug and the timing of the action. Three years later, the company announced its intention to collaborate with Deloitte to expand its solution for detecting and combating counterfeit COVID-19 medications.
Charity
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and any other currency can be donated to charity, just like other appreciated assets.
If you’re making charity donations often but wonder if the money is going where you intend it to, blockchain may help you track where your donations are going, when they arrive, and who gets hold of them. From there, blockchain can provide the transparency and accountability needed to solve the recurrent concerns about charitable donations, like organisational inefficiency that can prevent funds from reaching the intended recipients.
BitGive Foundation is an example of a Bitcoin-based charity that employs a transparent and secure distributed ledger to give contributors better visibility into fund use.
Did you know that crypto donations are exempt from capital gains taxes and are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law? Check if you can benefit from a tax break while helping your loved charity.
Cannabis
The cannabis industry is reaping significant investments in research and tech due to the rising support for legalisation across the United States and the legalisation of cannabis in Canada. The legalised cannabis industry may be firmly regulated and benefit from a secure and transparent system for tracking distribution and production.
Blockchain technology has the potential to offer a record of product movement from the farm to the dispensary, thereby improving safety and regulatory compliance.
Chain.io collaborated with Mile High Labs, a CBD product manufacturer and seller, to create a blockchain-tracked cannabis industry supply chain. The latter also shows interest in employing blockchain technology for compliance and regulation.
IBM has also recommended using blockchain technology as a means for governments to control the sale and source of cannabis.
Voting
Elections require secure recordkeeping to track votes, authentication of voters’ identities, and trustworthy tallies to determine the winner. Someday, the blockchain might help remove the need for recounts by preventing voter fraud and dirty games and serving as a foundational infrastructure for:
- Counting votes
- Tracking
- Casting.
Voters and governments would have a verifiable audit trail if votes were captured as transactions on a blockchain, guaranteeing no votes were modified or withdrawn and no illegal votes were added. Follow My Vote, a blockchain voting firm, made its patent-pending end-to-end blockchain voting technology public.
Trucking
Assets that may be tracked and documented using blockchain include digital transactions and physical goods such as transport trucks. And while many other businesses listed involve public data, private blockchain networks provide unique opportunities.
The Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA) was founded to create industry standards. It is the world’s biggest commercial blockchain alliance, with approximately 500 members working to develop frameworks that will transform the trucking and transportation industries. Blockchain technology may help improve transactions, fleet management, and cargo tracking while securing assets and increasing fleet efficiency.
It can help detect contaminated food by tracking a vehicle transporting materials and documenting whether or not the ingredients are compromised or if adequate storage conditions were maintained during any delays. Furthermore, it can aid in route optimisation by matching truckers and commodities to be delivered with trucks in a particular location.
However, for a decentralised ledger to operate in this market, all interested parties must agree: small and big enterprises, last-mile shippers, and giant tracking corporations.
As you can see, no industry is spared from issues. However, by thinking big and taking advantage of the innovative blockchain technology, some problems can be minimised.
