Cryptocurrency is only in its infancy, the crypto market is truly a global market, institutional money is coming, and prices are going to surge to all time new highs.
But how? When? Why would decentralization overthrow existing business models? What are some specific examples of operations ready for dethronement?
Examples of Business Models Ripe for Decentralized Overthrow:
- Uber
- Airbnb
- Ebay
- Airmiles (Consumer Reward Programs)
- Banks (Remittances)
- Store of Value (Commodities: Gold, silver, etc)
- Data Management (Cloud storage)
These are just a few examples and there are many more but for the sake of brevity we will focus on these select few.
How can decentralization revolutionize business operations?
Uber:
According to Money.cnn.com, Uber was worth between 60-70 billion as of Oct 2015 and more recently, Recode.net Uber was worth approximately 72 billion dollars as of February 2018.
What does Uber do?
- They link drivers with riders
- Monitor an insecure, centralized, reputation system which allows riders to assess a driver's "quality" beforehand.
- Take 25-30% of all revenues.
They are special because people know about them, people are comfortable using them, but that is their only competitive advantage. A decentralized coin, could do everything they do tomorrow, and save its rider 25-30%, without costing the driver anything. In so doing they would increase driver profits while lowering riders costs, while making this decentralized-uber more likely to attract riders.
The only requirement of such a theoretical token would is a smart contract capable blockchain, with a basic reputation system that securely stores our private personal user data and history, and that's it.
Airbnb & Ebay:
As with Uber, these are multi-billion dollar companies with global reach and huge annual revenues, and just like Uber, Airbnb and Ebay do little more than bring users together and take part of profits for enabling that connection.
There is literally nothing about either Airbnb or Ebay that cannot be copied and improved upon, through implementation of blockchain decentralization.
- These companies link buyers to sellers, so can a blockchain app.
- These companies have some rudimentary contract oversight, blockchains can be implemented with the much superior smart-contracts.
- These companies act as an intermediary and charge fees for our usage, blockchain erases all these fees and charges.
A decentralized version of either would eliminate the intermediary, replacing it with a trustless, decentralized, secure system. And immediately users would save on their purchases because of the erasure of hidden fees and costs, which get passed on to users in both Ebay & Airbnb.
Airmiles, Remittances, Social Media, Data Storage and More:
The balance of my examples can be more broadly summarized for brevity sake. Each of these companies, or business use-cases, can be improved through blockchain decentralization in that blockchain enables vastly improved data storage, user privacy, and elimination of third-party oversight which leads to third-parties selling the user privacy to adverstisers for their profit and your pain.
Facebook, Airmiles, and Dropbox all store your personal data in their systems and sell that history to advertisers hoping to use that data to sell you crap you don't need or want, and it works.
Decentralized versions of the same things exist now: Steemit is clearly a superior Facebook, Loyyal is a decentralized customer rewards program, and Sia is a online decentralized cloud storage system.
The benefits of blockchain on remittances are well documented, and I won't beat that dead horse, but suffice it to say the stranglehold of traditional remittance providers is dying and blockchain will reign that realm.
As with remittances, store of value has been long examined as a use-case for crypto, and I won't get in to it here again, except to say this. I do believe, at minimum, Bitcoin and Litecoin will outlast anyone alive to read this blog post, and yes their value will soar beyond our greatest expectations, eventually, because of their function as secure, trustless, portable, and immutable stores of value.
Conclusion:
If you are on Steemit, and own crypto, probably much of what I have written here is not news to you. You are more likely wondering when, not how, crypto will overtake the antiquated legacy systems. To you I say, soon: soon you will see cryptocurrency projects overtake and eliminate projects like Uber, Ebay, Airbnb, and Facebook.
If you agree, and if you share my long term bullish view, then do what you can to patiently await that time, while accumulating what you can. Focus your investments on projects you value most highly. Look for hidden value not hype and when the bull-run begins, set aside your pride and greed, and sell some of your gains to lock in profit. And always steer clear of crap coins that are derivative and redundant, offering nothing new or meaningful.
Do not chase profits. Invest in hidden value not some cheap coin.
Price is not the same as value.
Always remember we invest in quality not quantity, a million crap coins is worse than one revolutionary token. Look for value today, hidden value that is not currently reflected in the token's price and accumulate as you are able, within your means.
Hopefully you enjoyed the post, thanks for your time and attention. Have an awesome day!
