Changing the World with Blockchain

Growth Of Cryptocurrency Market

Ever since Bitcoin, the world of cryptocurrency had grown rapidly. Investors particularly from financial background shown immense interest in creating new cryptocurrencies and launching ICO. For a period of time, almost every single day there was at least one ICO launch in the market. Open source blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, NEM etc helped these investors to launch ICOs without any hassle.

During the tail end of 2015, it was the early days of Hyperledger from Linux foundation, Blockchain technology caught my eye and ignited vigorous study on it, until then i was working on retail solutions building mobile apps and ecommerce products. And then IBM launched its beta product called Fabric in 2016 – 2017. At this point of time, I pretty much understood the nooks and corners of Ethereum. I worked along with our sales team and helped bring ICO projects to our company. Within a year or so, I had the hands-on experience working with dozen of ICO launches. I wrote whitepaper, built architecture, suggested tech stacks and even telling them how to promote their ICO. Working with these Crypto investors helped me to understand the Trade and Exchange market and the demand for an alternative Commerce.

When stock market became volatile, inflation destroyed economy and the regulators tightened their grip due to political compulsion, it was a compulsion for a creation like Bitcoin or Litecoin. Due to its democratic trust-less network model, it became widely popular, people felt safe and invested their money on it. But then things gone bad, millions of cryptocurrencies launched into the market with plenty of risks, security issues and without proper financial viability. Some leading economies banned them, banks refused to accept their exchanges, thus Crypto market declined quickly, exactly the way it climbed up a year before.

Security Token Offerings

Based on my experience, I don’t think building your Cryptocurrencies, creating wallets and launching ICOs from Ethereum or any other platform simply going to guarantee you Token sale, unless you invest your cryptocurrency with ideas, ideas that can drive token sales, inspire investors to buy your coins. Security Token Offering is one such idea, but it should be backed by strong equity and business idea.

Crypto tokens on a blockchain is a brilliant idea, but it needs to be implemented with business ideas. The best part of ICO or STO unlike IPO is that it gives an alternate commerce system without the nuisance of a government regulatory or third-party services fee. It sets you with a customer base who already owns your coins and you can drive your business with that huge customer base that your tokens had built already.

Zebi Token is one such brilliant idea backed by Zebi ecosystem. Kodak came up with Kodak Coin for Image rights Management platform. I have also worked on a similar STO for a European based client called Julio Coin which is backed by the real-time stock values of established products such as Apple, Microsoft, Google etc and another Client called TTC which is basically used as an alternative payment currency for utility and ecommerce purchases and provides loyalty points, vouchers and coupons. Since these Token Creators are from the IT or Financial sector, their business ideas are basically technology or trading oriented, but there are other areas that can be explored too, it could be for Smart Street Parking on a P2P network, Mobile Battery Swapping for EV cars, merchandising at Airport Terminal using Tokens etc.

By means of these Tokens, you can generate investments for your business ideas, build Customer base and make sure you give Return on Investments.

Alternate Commerce

An alternative system where you can trade, sell your products and services, make payments, invest money and receive bills to drive economical growth. Alternate Commerce is not an option but a necessity. We need to find out ways for small farmers to sell their food grains and vegetables directly to the consumers, we had to address fuel price hikes that impacts inflation, there has to be a system which can help small scale industries to raise investments for their business. We are witnessing cash flow crisis due to ATM network issues, lack of sector based last mile payment solutions and so on.

More than 770 million people in the world can’t read or write a cheque, we need to find an alternative payment systems for them without cash or card or contacts. We need to build a system which can distribute funds directly to the beneficiaries rather than an intermediate to curb corruption, we are also in dire need to raise capital and invest on fixing climate change rather than hopelessly waiting for our governments to make it happen out of their political compulsion.

Blockchain of Things

Our cities are growing faster than we have imagined, economies in countries like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Germany etc are growing faster than expected. Governments are opening up their markets now out of compulsion. We can’t be complicit with the traditional system, traditional trading and traditional market anymore. The world is wide open now and it is full of opportunities.

We need to do it soon and do it efficiently that can last for the next century. I am certain Blockchain is the next big thing, it can play vital role for that. Blockchain is still a growing child, it has its deficiencies. We are fully yet to understand its strengths and weaknesses and what we can achieve with it. If not blockchain, we will at least witness something else evolving out of Blockchain that can fulfill 100% needs of the market and system today.

Blockchain need to come out of its cryptocurrency and ICO mode, it needs to find out ways to address the pain points of industries, governments and common people. It has the potential as a disruptive technology to do that combined with IoT, Artificial Intelligence and Big data. To create an alternate commerce or an alternate system, we need to unlearn our traditional thinking and centralised system. Things don’t work that way anymore. Traditional IT companies and established programmers finding it difficult to come out of this traditional mode. Nobody wants an application which just gives you data, we need an application that utilize these data to address the challenges that we have today. How we design the architecture, where we store the data, whom we communicate with, what we are integrating or securing, every single thing needs to change.

This is why I am currently working with my colleagues to come up with a library of blockchain use cases for different verticals. We are mixing it up with IoT, AI, Big data etc to give that edge which is needed for the market. Our solutions must be cost effective and ensure an efficient way to address the challenges. I think it can be achieved not just by a coder but a team of innovators who can understand the needs of the market, nuances of the industries and think differently. Thomas Edison once said “I find out what the world needs, then I go ahead and try to invent it”.

Together we can change the world, we just need to think little bit different…