“Companies in industries as diverse as finance, sports, health care, retail, oil and gas, and pharma are engaging in a wave of blockchain experiments,” write Gartner analysts David Furlonger and Christophe Uzureau in their recently published book The Real Business of Blockchain. “Many see it as the solution for bringing trust and transparency to digital environments.” Blockchain has indeed been capturing the imagination of business. According to a Gartner Research Forecast, the business value-add of blockchain is expected to exceed $3 trillion by 2030, over half that amount by 2025. But, in plain English, what does this all mean?
“It means you can theoretically do business with an unknown partner located anywhere on the planet and trade any asset at any transaction size and not need a lawyer, a bank, an insurance company, or any other intermediary making sure both of you follow through on what you’ve promised to do,” write the book’s authors. “Such a solution vastly expands the range of assets that a business could trade. The arrangement also greatly increases who or what a business could directly trade with, without needing a third party (which would take a piece of the value).”