Bitcoin Global News (BGN)
October 11, 2018 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- In the beginning, the
Blockchain was essentially just an immutable ledger. At that time
especially, it might have been harder to imagine how its possible
use cases would balloon to where they are today, in industries
ranging from: traditional banking services to the automotive
industry, to even real estate.
Even now, in October of this already torrid year
for the Blockchain industry as a whole, most of the news articles,
including those which claim to be breaking and unique, seem to be
about the technology being used in the same industries, over and
over.
Given certain comments by Blythe Masters in a
Bloomberg piece on Tuesday, this trend seems to be shifting, if
only just a little.
Going back to what was said above, we have
considered the Blockchain’s place in just about every possible
niche in the financial, real estate, and even automotive spaces,
among others.
One possible niche that seems to have been left
out is that of commodity markets. In the aforementioned Bloomberg
article, Masters is quoted as saying that she believes essentially
up to hundreds of use cases will surface for the Blockchain,
related to commodity markets, in the near future.
With this general quote as well as your existing
knowledge on what the Blockchain has been proven to be able to do,
it may be difficult to imagine what these are.
Cointelegraph published an article in response to
Bloomberg’s on Wednesday, that seems to attempt to answer this, at
face value, while in reality, it does not.
What it does appear to say is that due to the
confidence of major corporations like Walmart and IBM that has
already been thrown behind Blockchain-based supply chain solutions,
it seems clear that the future is changing. More specifically, it
could be said that Cointelegraph claims that this confidence also
indicates at least one use case for the Blockchain in commodity
markets.
The question is, still: what use case?
Given that by definition, commodity markets are
places in which people and corporations trade in agricultural as
well as mined resources like: coffee, wheat, gold, and oil, the
answer could be in tracking certain Key Performance Indicators,
related to these things.
If that was true, however, the question is, why
would the Blockchain be needed to do that? Due to its reputation
for undeniable transparency, we could say that the answer is to
promote further fairness in trading. On the other hand, it would
then be easy to argue that there is really little incentive for
companies competing to make the best trade on these products to
agree to such an idea.
With all of this in mind, the situation becomes
muddled, at best. In going back to Bloomberg’s article, Masters did
mention that judging by her experienced background in these
markets, she believes that their supply chains have been calling
for a change for quite some time.
Furthermore, we can add that Masters seems to
believe that the entire supply chains in these markets need to be
more transparent as well as hedged against risk.
At this time, however, with all of the existing
evidence in mind, no other use cases appear to be clear other than
what the Blockchain was meant to do from the start.
By: BGN Editorial Staff