A new ResearchandMarkets report suggests blockchain technology will boost the global GDP by almost $2 trillion by 2030. The firm also projects the global market for blockchain tech will reach $30.7 billion by 2027. Although many IT budgets were slashed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, technologies under the IoT (Internet of Things) umbrella, including automation, AI (artificial intelligence), and blockchain, are going to be a critical part of how businesses move forward in a post-COVID era.
For instance, blockchain technology can help companies and industries transform the supply chain by enabling the traceability of goods in some cases, like the food industry, and it can enable the trackability of records and data in other cases, like insurance and healthcare. ResearchandMarkets’ data suggests the manufacturing and resources sector will demonstrate the fastest growth in terms of blockchain spending, with a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 60.5% during the forecast period (2021-2027). Other industries leveraging blockchain include retail, pharmaceutical, agriculture, logistics and transportation, and banking and financial services.
In fact, blockchain is transforming the financial services market, and it will be increasingly important to the future of this space. A 2018 study from Juniper Research estimated blockchain deployments would save banks more than $27 billion in cross-border settlement transactions by 2030—an 11% reduction. Now a few years into this forecast period, could this happen? Beyond cost savings, there are many other benefits of adopting blockchain technology. Blockchain technology company ConsenSys says some of these benefits in financial services include security, because of the distributed, consensus-based architecture; transparency, because it acts as a “single shared source of truth”; trust, because it offers an undisputable ledger of transactions; and privacy, among others.
One innovator in the space is AllianceBlock, which is working to bridge the traditional centralized finance market with the DeFi (decentralized finance) market in order to add value to both worlds. The AllianceBlock Protocol is a decentralized, blockchain-agnostic layer 2 that automates the process of converting digital or crypto assets into bankable products. AllianceBlock recently announced it secured funding under the $100 million Binance Smart Chain Accelerator Fund—a seed fund set up to boost the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem.
Binance Smart Chain is a smart contract blockchain that offers fast execution times and low transaction fees with smart contracts functionality. Its Token Canal project is a Binance Smart Chain community-wide project that aims to help developers connect the Binance Smart Chain with other public chains. AllianceBlock launched on Binance Smart Chain in 2020, and it will benefit from the Binance Smart Chain community as part of the fund.
Big news in the cryptocurrency world was the debut of Coinbase on Wall Street on April 14—the first major player in crypto to go public. The debut is a milestone for the industry; cryptocurrency is moving toward mainstream. In a blog, Coinbase cofounder and CEO Brian Armstrong said, “Everyone deserves access to financial services that can help them build a better life for themselves and their families. We have a lot of hard work to do to make this a reality.” Innovators like AllianceBlock are helping with the heavy lifting. And innovative progress and adoption of blockchain in one industry will lead to innovative progress and adoption in more industries.
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