No doubt you've heard about the Bitcoin phenomenon: its meteoric rise in value, the hacks, price volatility, government resistance, and the sacrificial early adopters.
As is often the case, the story behind the story may be the more important one. Bitcoin tends to get all of the press. While it may or may not become the currency of the future, the tech behind the scenes is definitely here to stay. Blockchain is a decentralized database that records all transactions in the cryptocurrency system. The combination of this open and distributed system with strong cryptographic controls significantly reduces the risk of corruption or intentional manipulation by a bad actor.
The Blockchain solution's elegance ensures it will be co-opted for all manner of online systems. A quick peek at coinmarketcap.com reveals a list of some 1370 different cryptocurrencies. Governments and financial institutions are jumping on the bandwagon, too. So don't be surprised when your annual income tax payment/refund switches over to a Blockchain transaction between your bank and the IRS.
Given the hackable nature of many IoT devices, a mashup of Blockchain and IoT presents a promising potential solution for securing the management and configuration of these devices. The additional potential to extend this concept to an almost endless list of commercial and industrial devices represents a significant benefit for organizations struggling to manage an exploding universe of connected devices and systems.
Finally, what effect will adopting these technologies have on our internal accounting and finance systems? Will Blockchain replace our existing databases? Will this finally open the door to simple B2B & B2C data exchanges for invoices and payments? I hope you are ready for change; it is coming!