Blockchain Delivers a Glimpse of Future Innovation Today
Scott Barron Aug 21, 2019 06:11
A brief look at how the energy market and consumers will benefit from blockchain technology in the near future.
The media is always keen to report on the latest developments around blockchain and digital currencies and pull in colossal numbers of readers hungry to explore the details behind the headlines. Many commentators are switching on to the reality that, despite the fluctuating price of some coins and utility tokens, the underlying blockchain technology continues to grow in spectacular leaps and bounds.
Blockchain is not just about digital currencies and faster peer-to-peer transactions but part of an advanced ecosystem of emerging technologies encompassing artificial intelligence, robotics, and commerce.
One of the many exciting areas that blockchain will radically evolve is the current energy market by providing a multitude of opportunities that may not yet have even been considered. Blockchain technology will blur the boundaries between cash, energy products and it will also facilitate the surge of crossovers into other commodities, transforming them all into readily tradable digital assets. Let’s map things out a little and put things into perspective and look to the future. Imagine the trading floor in the near future, say five years from now.
It's a lot quieter; there's no commotion, there's no need for the calamity of traders with phones pressed to their ears scrambling for the best rates. Now trading robots are using advanced algorithms to scan the electricity market in real-time, automatically optimizing the search to get the best deal for the customer based on their predicted needs for that period taking into account the weather and past usage, etc.
At home, the customer uses her now old Samsung S10 mobile device to approve the terms of sale, and a smart contract is made, then the trade is executed and immediately recorded on the blockchain. The electricity provider can automatically access the blockchain information, and physical payment occurs daily with the payment initiated immediately through their choice of Digital Wallet.
All activity is now instantly accessible by the seller, buyer, pipeline and the remittance provider - and this is only one example of thousands, if not millions, of use cases of blockchain technology. Businesses will rely on more and more AI systems to act as a translator of their needs and automate their processes while handling enormous volumes of data, all with extremely low transactional costs and reduced risk.
Intermediaries such as brokers are sitting up and taking notice as their entire business models could be affected if they fail to integrate blockchain technology into their ecosystems. These benefits are undoubtedly seductive and hard to ignore, but does this scenario sound a little too far-fetched, especially in the time frame stated above? Perhaps, or perhaps not but who really knows in this exciting, fast-paced hyper-connected world in which we find ourselves.
While we are not able to actually see into the future, the potential of Blockchain technology for allowing remittance to be made to energy providers through a digital wallet is not too hard to imagine. And finally, the use of digital wallets on smartphones continues to raise exciting possibilities for their use in the developing world.
Image source: Shutterstock
Image via Shutterstock
