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Is This The End Of Blockchain? Posted on : Dec 10 - 2018

In recent years much has been said about the transformative power of blockchain – the distributed, encrypted ledger technology that powers Bitcoin.

Although Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are its most publicized use cases, it was often said that blockchain would revolutionize many other business processes across industries, from banking to diamond mining and food safety.

However, a recent study into 43 initiatives reported that despite a great number of promises and convincing arguments, none of the projects have been able to show that they have been able to use blockchain technology to achieve their objectives.

With Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies steadily losing value during 2018 – as much as 80% compared to their peaks last year – is it time to admit that the great experiment with decentralized, distributed ledgers has failed?

Whenever any new technology emerges which has the potential to shake things up, the loudest noise will be made by those selling it.

On top of this, blockchain has been tainted in the minds of many, thanks to the large amount of hot air, and outright scams, that have been generated by the cryptocurrency industry.

Aside from a large number of exchanges vanishing with customer funds, and later being exposed as illegal operations, the trend of ICOs – initial coin offerings – has resulted in many failed projects and lost money.

ICOs are touted as a new way of raising capital for a business by offering digital cryptocurrency tokens which in theory will increase in value as the business grows. However, the lack of transparency around the practice, and the tendency for initiatives to disappear into thin air along with investors' money has led to regulators issuing warnings about getting involved.

While these issues bear little relationship with industrial blockchain concepts, which often use private blockchains, the large amount of negative press has undoubtedly led to organizations becoming more careful.

This is even impacting the language companies use – where the term distributed ledger technology, abbreviated to DLT, is becoming more common so that businesses can avoid the negative associations of the word blockchain, according to Forrester.

Beyond that, Blockchain has other fundamental barriers to adoption. One of these is the fact that it isn't always easy to explain to someone what's so revolutionary about blockchain. Sure, it allows us to keep secure records of transactions – but so do other conventional databases if properly secured with cryptography. View More