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. Digital money is the main application, with multiple countries developing central bank digital currencies (CBDC) in 2024 - blockchain versions of real-world fiat money, like the digital euro or e-Naira in Nigeria - to eventually improve cross-border transactions. How is blockchain technology applied since it hit the news in 2020 and 2021?
Blokchain's role in 2024 and beyond is relatively unclear, as artificial intelligence grabbed headlines. Whether blockchain will see further implementations among businesses, depends on how much some of its ideas make it to the real world and not just the virtual world.
Blockchain in finance: More than digital money?
A large focus of blockchains are 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. Such applications sit closely to the core design of blockchain, namely a digital public ledger held on several thousands of computers simultaneously. Blockchain-powered retail payments, such as with cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, are uncommon, though, due to their slow transaction speed and price volatility.Blockchain gaming: Earning NFTs for real money
Games created digital markets to buy and sell virtual blockchain-based items: Non-fungible tokens or NFTs - virtual deeds of ownership of a unique (usually digital) item. For gaming, these are typically in-game cosmetics. Blockchain games like Axie Infinity became popular in Asia-Pacific as one could play the game, earn (in-game) NFTs, and sell these online. The most popular blockchain games are built upon the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) blockchain from Binance. Younger audiences displayed interest as 17 percent of U.S. respondents ages 17 to 34 replied they were genuinely interested in the idea of play-to-earn.Blockchain in real estate: Tokenization and the metaverse
NFTs focused especially on in-game items and crypto art. A third case included virtual (plots of land for) real estate on the metaverse. Sales of such property NFTs - virtual deeds of ownership of individualized digital land for online real estate development - grew significantly in 2021. Metaverse real estate 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 that real estate was their most likely virtual purchase in a metaverse. As interest in blockchain faded, however, the U.S. real estate industry did not consider blockchain a significant disruptor anymore.Blokchain's role in 2024 and beyond is relatively unclear, as artificial intelligence grabbed headlines. Whether blockchain will see further implementations among businesses, depends on how much some of its ideas make it to the real world and not just the virtual world.
