Finance on blockchain: How utility blockchains will revolutionize global finance

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While much of the focus on blockchains in recent years has been on the speculative price of the tokens issued on them, thankfully, things are beginning to shift, and there’s an increased awareness about the potential for blockchain technology to disrupt industries.

One sector that is already beginning to feel the impact is finance. It is perhaps one of the most apparent industries for a technology designed to reduce friction and increase transparency to shake up. This article will explore how scalable utility blockchains are set to revolutionize global finance.

Payments and remittances

Of all the areas of finance blockchains might disrupt, payments and remittances are perhaps the clearest. The friction in global payments and remittances is well-understood, and ever since the invention of the internet, entrepreneurs have been working on ways to reduce it.

When Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin protocol, he made specific reference to the small, casual transactions it could enable. He explained how, due to the overheads of trusted third parties, the minimum variable transaction on the internet was relatively high, but Bitcoin had been designed to change that.

As BSV blockchain shows today, it’s possible to transact on the BSV blockchain for as little as 0.00001 cents per transaction. For all intents and purposes, transactions arrive instantly. To anyone involved in the payments and remittances industries, the revolutionary potential of such technology is blatantly obvious.

With tiny fees and no ‘permission’ required to start using BSV, the world’s poorest people can begin transacting online for the first time. Companies, individuals, and other parties can save billions per year on transaction fees, and the number and velocity of global payments can increase to unimaginable numbers.

Five dollars saved on fees means a lot to families in the Philippines and South Africa as they receive remittances from abroad, the ability to accept and make micropayments opens up new business models for entrepreneurs, and the time-stamped nature of blockchain-based payments means fraud can be easily detected and prevented. Payments and remittances will never be the same (in a good way) once the world wakes up to the ability of blockchain technology to disrupt them.

Tokenization of assets

Another relatively well-understood use case for blockchain in finance is the tokenization of assets. However, while the concept itself has been discussed at length in the past few years, few have dared to imagine just how far this can go, mostly due to the technical limitations of many well-known blockchains like Ethereum.

In short, the tokenization of assets involves issuing tokens on scalable blockchains to represent real-world or digital assets. Property, cars, stocks and shares, gold bars, art, and just about anything you can think of can be represented by tokens on the blockchain.

What would the implications of the tokenization of assets at scale be? To name but a few, accurate and undeniable records of ownership, verified authenticity, friction-free transfer of ownership, time-stamped records of buying and selling (including the real-time collection of taxes and fees), and fractionalizing of assets are some of the possibilities.

Honing in on the ability to fractionalize assets, it’s going to be possible for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people to own a piece of real estate, high-end art, or other valuables. While there are legacy platforms that enable this to some extent today, tokenization on blockchains will eliminate the need for trusted third parties, reduce costs, and automatically provide time-stamped public records of everything.

With cash-based systems like the BSV blockchain, many will be able to own tokenized assets for the first time, owning property on an immutable ledger from which records can not be deleted. Think about how that changes the world!

Rewards and loyalty programs

Serious businesses across all industries have rewards and loyalty programs to keep regular customers happy. However, blockchain technology can fundamentally change how loyalty programs work in multiple positive ways.

Blockchains can make loyalty points interoperable and can even create markets for them. While in traditional loyalty programs, points can only be used in the business they are earned from, blockchain makes it possible for them to be interoperable, potentially allowing you to use points earned at Walmart to buy a coffee at Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) or even to sell them or trade them for other kinds of points.

As with all other areas, blockchain makes it much more difficult to commit fraud and steal loyalty points. Since all transactions are traceable on the blockchain, any fraud committed would be visible to all, disincentivizing this kind of behavior. Blockchains can also allow businesses to issue their own branded loyalty points securely, reducing the risk of fraud.

Blockchain-based token systems can also improve the customer experience regarding loyalty points. Instead of tracking their points through multiple apps, it’s possible to create a portal in which all of your points earned from different businesses are visible and, as mentioned above, potentially tradable with other users.

For businesses, all of this will lead to increased engagement and a better understanding of customers. For example, Walmart notices that a given customer always trades his loyalty points for others that can buy him coffee, that’s a valuable marketing insight!

The financial revolution is upon us

As the obsession with blockchain token prices dies down, a greater understanding of the technology’s potential to revolutionize finance is underway. However, for any of the above to be possible, scalable public blockchains with extremely low fees will be required.

To learn more about how blockchains can and are being used to change industries for the better, join us at the London Blockchain Conference between May 31 and June 2. Grab your free ticket now to mix with like-minded blockchain enthusiasts focused on the real-world use cases of this powerful, world-changing technology.

Whether you’re a business building on a blockchain, an enterprise or government seeking solutions, or are simply keen to know more about how utility blockchains work, we hope to see you there!

Watch: Blockchain for banking and finance