In 2020, many of the world's most influential business executives and policymakers are aware of blockchain's potential to turn the global economy around. But there was a time when it was not discussed in the same sentence as Bitcoin.

Ilija Acimovic

The practicality of blockchain has been gaining tremendous publicity. Let us dig into the mainstream adoption of this revolutionary technology.

Along with other forms of distributed ledger technology, blockchain could become the global decentralised source of trust. More and more thought leaders are getting convinced of its prowess to minimise business uncertainty and boost profit due to several reasons.

In 2018, $673bn was the estimated annual savings obtained through digital trade in the Asia Pacific region alone. On a global scale, the decrease in overhead could elevate the competitiveness of any businesses, especially those operating in the least developed nations, for going paperless could slash up to 30% of trading costs.

All records on a blockchain network are time-stamped. To be clear, such pieces of information are not completely tamperproof. But any fraudsters would fail against an entire army of fact-checkers with no vested interest other than maintaining data legitimacy.

Moreover, any blockchain-driven supply chains can make it easier to identify compromised items. The ability to retrace the journey of goods (from the source to the market) at a glance could prevent unnecessary product recalls and avoid similar problems from recurring.

Admittedly, not all companies must embrace this disruptive innovation. But at least 55 industries have found value in it. In fact, many of them have already tested different use cases for blockchain.

Facebook has announced its intention to establish a blockchain-powered P2P network using its own stablecoin called Libra. Considering the enormous social and financial clout of the company in many countries, Facebook could challenge the influence of central banks if the Libra ecosystem sees the light of day.

The potential of this decentralised distributed ledger to improve centralised management was not lost on many of the most loaded brands on the planet.

For instance, Amazon now offers tools to businesses that wish to climb on the blockchain bandwagon while Ant Financial has developed its own proprietary tech for many things, including tracking the countless goods changing hands on an Alibaba marketplace.

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