20 Ways Blockchain Technology Will Change Our World In The Future

19. Cyber Security

Nowadays, it seems like customer data is being stolen from companies at least once a week. When technology has been around for a long time, it gets easier and easier for hackers to figure out how to break into the system. Blockchain technology is so secure, it will be impossible to hack, and it will make the digital world a much safer place.

How is is blockchain so impossible to hack, you might ask?

To answer that question, you need to first understand the way the current internet security works. A website’s information is stored on a server, which exists in a physical location in the world. Each server is protected by passwords. So really, all it takes is figuring out the password. It’s not as simple as that, of course, and a hacker will have to override security measures.

With blockchain, it is impossible to gain access to someone’s account without knowing a few random keywords that were given to them when the first established their wallets, which is encouraged to be kept in the real world, instead of the digital world. Next, there is two-factor verification, which requires you to input a code texted to your cellphone, on top of the normal passwords. With all of this combined, it is impossible to hack remotely, or even if someone breaks into your house. Even after all of these hurdles, if someone still manages to steal your money or ID, the ledger will track exactly where the stolen money has done, and lead it back to the criminal.

18. The Internet of Things

Nowadays almost everything in your home has a “smart” version- From smart TV’s, bathroom scales, and the NEST home system, there are chips collecting data in just about everything, nowadays. For a lot of the objects that fall under the “Internet of things”, it might require you to connect two objects via bluetooth, like a cellphone and your car stereo. A lot of these items need to share information with one another, like a smartwatch tracking the number of steps you take, and that data is electronically sent to the fitness app on your cell phone.

With blockchain, it will become easier than ever for all of these objects to communicate with one another instantly with an added level of security. Imagine a world where you wake up in the morning and step on your bathroom scale. The scale tells your smartwatch how many calories you need to lose that day to get down to your goal weight, and a smart fridge reminds you of the number of calories you have left to eat in the day, because your fitness watch told your fridge how much exercise you got.

17. The Power Grid

All over the world, people have issues with their power grid. If something goes wrong at the central power grid, an entire city can lose electricity during a natural disaster or brown-out.

Solar panels have been around for a while now, and there are plenty of companies that are trying to improve how we can use the sun to power our homes. If you are unaware of how solar power works, the process is not as straight-forward as you might think. First, the panels take in the sunlight. If you are at home on a sunny day using your appliances and lights, you get to use electricity for free. If there is excess power, you can’t store it anywhere and save it for later, unless you buy a huge battery, which costs a few thousand dollars.

Most people cannot afford the $3,000 to $5,000 price tag, so the extra power is sent to “the grid”. You essentially sell that excess electricity back to the power company, and they sell your extra electricity to your neighbors for a profit. On a cloudy day, if your solar panels are not making enough energy, you still have to pay for electricity from the power company. In the end, you may not be getting “free” power, especially if you are trying to power a large house with an entire family living inside. Sure, you might be saving hundreds or even thousands of dollars over the course of a year, but improvements can still be made.

Now, imagine a world where you have solar panels with a battery inside your garage. You can store your extra energy for a cloudy day, without having to buy buy anything from the power company. And on a sunny day, you can make money from sending electricity to your next door neighbor. You check your cellphone on a sunny day, and see money appearing out of thin air. With blockchain, that is actually possible. The technology already exists.

In Puerto Rico, they have the perfect opportunity to try this out. The power grid was destroyed during Hurricane Maria, and there is a backwards law that the old power grid can only be replaced, not improved. This is problematic for a million reasons, and much of the island is still without power, even though it has been a year since the storm. An entrepreneur and blockchain enthusiast named Brock is working with the local Puerto Rican government to get a blockchain power grid going. In Brooklyn, New York, a community of people are already experimenting in creating their own solar power grid, which would help them disconnect from the rest of the city’s power supply. They are trying to push for a more efficient system in the United States, but it will probably be decades before we see any real progress.

16. Smart Contracts

A smart contract is a general term of the ability to exchange some form of value between two people without needing a middleman. This can be money, real estate, shares of stock, and basically anything else that typically requires you to sign a dotted line. Some day, smart contracts might start to replace lawyers and real estate agents. In the future, it will be easier than ever for people to create legally binding contracts on their own.

15. Health Care

Healthcare is a sensitive subject, because people really want their privacy when it comes to their medical history, and they are afraid that if it is inputed into a digital system, it could somehow be used against them. However, this need for privacy causes the medical industry to run into a lot of issues. Referrals and prescription history needs to be requested in order to share the info between doctors, and people have died at the hospital because they did not know the full extent of the patient’s medical history. With health records on-demand, people will receive a better quality of care, and may end up living healthier lives in the future.

14. Government Budgets

For anyone who has worked in an administrative position at a government job in the United States, you might already know how the current budget system is actually really screwed up. You would think that the highest levels of government would be good at money management, but they’re not.

Imagine a government institution, and they are split into Departments A, B, and C. Each of them gets a budget of $100,000 a year for their operation costs. Department A was not wasteful, and they only ordered things that they needed that year, so they only spent $80,000. Departments B and C, however, were using something once, and then tossing it out. They were stacking extra supplies in a closet without ever actually touching it. Maybe they even managed to sneak things home with them. B and C max out their $100,000. The head honchos look at Department A, and they decide to cut their budget back to $80,000, because it appears as if they do not need the money. Essentially, they get punished for being frugal, and tax payer dollars are being wasted for the sake of maintaining a department’s budget. According to Samson Sans from Wharton Business School, they believe that the US government absolutely needs blockchain in order to improve some of the ongoing issues.

13. Voting

If you pay attention to the news, you know that hackers infiltrating elections is a huge issue, and even in the 2018 midterm election, people were posting videos of machines that appeared to be broken or rigged to vote for the wrong candidate.

Voting online through the internet is considered to be too risky, but with the added security and identity measures of blockchain, we will probably never have to stand in line to make a vote again. West Virginia has already allowed people to vote online via the blockchain, and it is only a matter of time before the entire country makes the transition.

12. Renting Things

A company called Omni allows you to rent out your expensive items in your home like bicycles, surf boards, and skis to strangers in exchange for cash. This is a great option for people who need to make some extra cash, and it just might make an item pay for itself. On Omni, you already have the option to earn cryptocurrency instead of actual money, if you want to. This makes payments go much faster for people who are trying to rent and lease products to one another.

11. Real Estate

Today, if you want to buy a house, the entire process can take a month or more. If someone wants to sell their house, there are a few different middle-men asking for paperwork, title documents, proof of income, and multiple contracts. Between the real estate agent, the broker, the municipal workers, inspectors, and lawyers, it takes an entire team to buy or sell a house. In the future, the real estate exchange process of gathering all of the information and payments will be a lot faster and smoother. It will also become easier for two individuals to sell a house directly to a buyer.

10. Business Transactions

White collar crimes happen nearly every day. A lot of the time, an executive will quietly pocket the money out of a budget in order to keep some of that cash for themselves. With blockchain, there is always a public ledger with a record of where the money is going. This will make it much easier to catch corruption before it can get out of hand.

9. Freight Transportation

Major corporations like Walmart have to send their products all over the country. This requires a lot of record-keeping and sending money from state to state to pay for drivers to transport goods. Right now, human error always comes into play. This, in turn, ends up costing a company more money in freight expenses. Blockchain would improve the record-keeping process, it would in turn save money on costs.

8. Rideshare Services

Rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft help part-time drivers make some extra money, but they also have to pay a percentage of their income to the company. In the future, you may be able to get a ride from someone and pay them directly on their phone for their service. Uber has already been in communication with Ripple, who can process payments within a matter of seconds. This would improve the quality of life for Uber drivers, because they can get paid immediately for their services, instead of waiting for a deposit in their bank account.

7. Disaster Relief

Dealing with FEMA is something that most people never have to experience, unless they become the victim of a natural disaster. Unfortunately, the system is not as smooth as you might think. Many people who are victims of a natural disaster have to wait months to get their payout, and some people never get any money at all. If blockchain improves banking and record-keeping in the future, people who live in homes that were affected by a disaster might automatically get a payout after a hurricane, earthquake, or other natural disaster.

6. Crowdfunding and Charities

When you donate to a charity today, you never know how much of a percentage of your donation will actually go to the people in need. In many cases, the CEO’s of the organizations take a huge cut of donation money before the funds ever go to the people who need the help. The same can be said of crowdfunding platforms like Patreon and GoFundMe, which take a cut of the proceeds in exchange for using their platform. In the future, we will be able to send money directly to the wallets of people we see on the news who need financial help.

5. Banking

In today’s day and age, it’s hard to believe that it still takes banks 3 to 4 days to send money back and forth, when it takes just a few seconds to send a text message or an e-mail. After all, moving money between bank accounts are really just digital numbers on a screen, right? Unfortunately, the banking industry is still really outdated. All transactions have to go through a ton of middle-men, and it’s very expensive. Trillions of dollars are tied up just waiting to help transactions clear. Ripple’s XRP is already gathering hundreds of banking partners around the world, and it’s already being used in Japan and South Korea.

4. The Stock Exchange

The New York Stock Exchange, The Toyko Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and ASX have already begun to utilize blockchain to help run their ledger system. This makes the process of buying and selling stocks faster, cheaper, and more accurate. Trades will be settled within seconds, instead of days, and traders will be able to make higher profits with quick transactions. This may help improve the economy overall.

3. Identification

Today, “catfishing” is an unfortunate reality of online dating. It’s when someone pretends to be someone that they are not- stealing photographs of attractive people and making up lies about their accomplishments, in order to get the time and attention from others.

In the future, blockchain can give us a digital identity that is unique to each and every person- meaning that you will not be able to pretend to be someone else. With the added security features, it will be impossible to fake someone else’s identity. This process will make it a lot easier for law enforcement to keep track of suspects in a crime, cut down wait time at the DMV, and so much more.

2. Social Media

In today’s world, social media is kind of a mess, and a lot of things actually get censored. Since blockchain is all about decentralization, some people believe that in the future, free speech will only be truly possible through blockchain enabled social media, because securing their true identity would be far more difficult that just finding an IP address linked with an account. On the other hand, this would actually make it more difficult for law enforcement to track down people who have committed crimes online. Just like the death of Myspace and the current distrust of Facebook, only time will tell which social media the public will begin to flock to next.

1. Insurance

Getting insurance coverage can sometimes be a complicated process, and a lot of paperwork has to go back and forth in order to apply for a policy. Insurance fraud is also a big issue, when people and companies claim to be owed some kind of payout. By using blockchain, insurance companies could process applications, access medical information about a patient, and create smart contracts more efficiently that the current system that we have in place. This would also eliminate the need for customer service representatives who go through a lot of data entry, and it would probably make insurance more affordable for people to purchase.