Raynor de Best
Content expert covering payments and (crypto)currencies
Blockchain - statistics & facts
Blockchain is said to have several use cases – in gaming, real estate, supply chain management, and healthcare - although most applications are found in finance. This is somewhat unsurprising, as the technology is often described as being a digital public ledger held on several thousands of computers simultaneously. The most prominently talked about blockchain application by 2024 is digital money. Multiple countries are developing central bank digital currencies (CBDC) - digital versions of real-world fiat money, like the digital euro or e-Naira in Nigeria, using blockchain - to eventually improve cross-border transactions. Blockchain-powered retail payments, such as with cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, are uncommon, though. Their slow transaction speed and price volatility make them unreliable. Instead, the blockchains of Ethereum, Solana, and Cardano focus on smart contracts, or self-executing contracts with predefined rules. Smart contracts saw most use in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) programs, or protocols. DeFi protocols typically focus on services, like currency exchange or money lending and less on products such as insurance.
Before artificial intelligence, blockchain was considered a disruptor – especially in finance. Has distributed ledger technology been beneficial, however, for other industries outside of finance?
Before artificial intelligence, blockchain was considered a disruptor – especially in finance. Has distributed ledger technology been beneficial, however, for other industries outside of finance?
Blockchain gaming: Earning NFTs for real money
Games expanded on the financial services developed with DeFi and created digital markets to buy and sell virtual in-game items. These items were non-fungible tokens or NFTs - virtual deeds of ownership of a unique (usually digital) item. For gaming, these items are typically in-game cosmetics. Blockchain games like Axie Infinity became immediately popular in Asia-Pacific as these allowed one to play the game, earn (in-game) NFTs, and then sell these online for cryptocurrency and, eventually, fiat money. The most popular blockchain games are built upon the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) blockchain, which allows integration with crypto exchange Binance. Younger audiences displayed interest in this concept: 17 percent of U.S. respondents ages 17 to 34 replied to a November 2022 survey they were very interested in the idea of play-to-earn.Blockchain in real estate: Tokenization beyond the metaverse
By late 2021, NFTs had two clear use cases: In-game items and crypto art. A third case revealed itself after Facebook rebranded itself into Meta in November 2021: Virtual (plots of land for) real estate. Sales of such property NFTs - virtual deeds of ownership of individualized digital land for online real estate development - grew significantly during that period of time. Real estate in the metaverse can be unique virtual housing or digital recreations of physical buildings or landmarks. The latter allowed investors to develop real estate tokens that make one a (fractional) owner of real-world property. Possibly because of its potential for passive income, U.S. respondents indicated in 2022 that real estate was their most likely virtual purchase in a metaverse. As the initial enthusiasm for the metaverse and NFTs faded, so did the interest in tokenized real estate. By 2023, the U.S. real estate industry did not consider blockchain a significant disruptor.
