Blockchain technology is generally most closely associated with the cryptocurrency, bitcoin. Bitcoin has done well in 2017, with many people around the world, especially in Asia, seeing it as a new form of ‘safe haven’ when national currencies are affected by things going on from a macroeconomic perspective in the world.

While an election, budget announcement, interest rate decision or other financial event may affect things like a local currency or FTSE 100 futures, bitcoin–as a digital currency– isn’t impacted the same way.

However, bitcoin was in and of itself a bold and ambitious venture, and despite its current success, there is always a chance it may become redundant in the future. Perhaps the currency will still exist and hold value, but will operate on a different platform, or perhaps it will simply fall out of favour altogether. Were this to happen, it would be likely to be after the ‘mining period’ for bitcoin is over, and all of the bitcoins that were ever due to be released into circulation are already in use.

What would the end of bitcoin mean, however, for the blockchain technology that it relies on?

Bitcoin is not the only blockchain cryptocurrency

Before delving into what a world without an interest in bitcoin would mean for blockchain, it is important to note that bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency using it. While it was the first, bitcoin is not the only digital currency.

It could be that another cryptocurrency startup would simply find a better way of doing things than bitcoin and win over the market – much as Google won over the search engine audience and became the biggest player by far simply by doing things better than their original rivals like Yahoo, Lycos and Ask Jeeves. In 1998, it would have seemed unlikely for one search engine to gain this kind of monopoly, but it happened, and so a venture that found new and better ways to mine a currency and use blockchain may emerge and take away bitcoin’s prevalence. This will be bad news for bitcoin investors, but good news for blockchain.

At present, Ethereum is the second biggest blockchain cryptocurrency, and the balance of power between the two could change, or new currencies could further gain market share of the cryptocurrency market – in either case, blockchain thrives even where the individual currencies themselves lose favour.

Blockchain is used for other financial projects

However, even if mined currencies like bitcoin were to fall out of favour altogether, blockchain has become important in other ways in the financial world. One well publicised project created by Barbados based blockchain start-up Bitt aims to create a way of selling and buying across the whole of the Caribbean using blockchain. This would be hugely beneficial, because as a closely connected group of hundreds of islands, many with their own currencies, it would make inter-island trade much easier, and help businesses in the region thrive.

However, this system would not be based on bitcoin, but a new cryptocurrency pegged to local currencies and designed with the support of banks. The blockchain tech would simply allow transactions to take place without a bank as a middleman, and facilitate the easy trade people are looking for. US blockchain businesses are already partnering with Bitt to try and make this a reality, and while there will be legal hurdles to cover, from a technological perspective this is a very good use of blockchain.

This is just one example, but globally there are plenty of ventures investigating using blockchain in new ways financially.

Blockchain has potential in other markets

Finance and currency are not the only fields where blockchain has made an impact. The benefits of blockchain systems have already been proven in a lot of other spheres, not least human resources. Many analysts and experts in the fields of recruitment and HR believe blockchain could be used very effectively both for jobseekers and employees. Jobseekers could have verifiable records of their previous employment and qualifications were people to have blockchain based resumes. Within a company, all of the data around a given employee could also be managed very effectively in this way. Data about people is in many ways as sensitive as data about bank account balances, and so there is no surprise in that the blockchain revolution has been of serious interest to those who work in HR software.

While bitcoin doesn’t look set to go away or even suffer a decline anytime soon, it is well worth considering that blockchain and bitcoin are not the same thing – even if the famous cryptocurrency relies on blockchain and is the first introduction, most people get the concept.

Blockchain is being developed and used in a wide range of markets and industries, and is something the tech industry, as a whole, is always looking for new ways to apply. Ultimately, blockchain is a very clever way of doing things that will survive, regardless of what happens in the future for bitcoin.

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