Blockchain: The Democratized Trust

Blockchain is the ultimate technological form of democracy. Its power resides on its "people", that is, on the nodes that store the data and also work in mining each block, and they are those that make blockchain a so powerful technology.

In an environment that demands trust, transparency, collaboration, security and disintermediation (where third-party are taken out by connecting directly two parts) is where we can take the most out of blockchain.

Financial Services Industry (FSI) have realized this power when they were trying to understand how Bitcoin works. Right after that, they begun to study this technology so they could break paradigms innovating on infrastructure services to provide the best scenario to escalate enterprise adoption. Into FSI, some large blockchain consortiums are already formed. Some are as bigger as having 42 of the world's largest banks as members. Technology providers are also engaged to enable FSI companies work with blockchains, creating standard-based, open-sourced blockchain platforms.

All this fuss over this subject is is corroborated by the investment of approximately $1 billion in 120 blockchain-related start-ups, half of that just in the last year.

While much of what is told about blockchain focus on the benefit of its availability to public nodes and search for public records, it is essential not to forget that one great feature is its power to protect private data, like documents that contain highly personal, confidential information.

There are some prototype blockchain systems, that are still being tested, allow individuals to keep their own medical records distributed and through the blockchain in which the doctor can alert the pacient and the practitioner or specialist to any relevant event.

Finally, we are seeing an increasingly number of companies turning their attention to blockchain and trying to explore business opportunities and disrupt existing industries. But before you embark on this journey, download a bitcoin wallet and try it for yourself. It might just spark a new idea for this nascent technology.