BLOCKCHAIN: FUTURE IS “IMMUTABLE”

Blockchain: The origin of blockchain spurred from bitcoin digital currency invented by Satoshi
Nakamoto who is a pseudonymous developer. Blockchain is the underlying technology in the crypto
currency market like bitcoin, XRP, ethereum. A blockchain has several built-in security features that
make it attractive. A blockchain is a shift away from traditional trust agents and a move towards
transparency. This technology have the potential to improve security, processes, and systems in the
financial service domain, in government and every sphere where accurate tamper-proof record
keeping is essential. The disrupted industries will include healthcare, education, financial services,
aviation, global logistics, shipping, transportation, music, manufacturing, security, media, education,
land use and e-governance.

Blockchain requires high configuration and support systems that are currently becoming a reason of
its ineffectiveness in the outer world. To be ready for the future of such a technology, companies need
to start considering blockchain as an effective tool. This event should be further taken to create
prototypes, proof of concepts, and conduct pilots with most valuable and least disruptive use cases.
Financially, the blockchain technology has such huge potential for growth, and the associated benefits
wind up outweighing the cost of adoption. Also, the roles of intermediaries will be eliminated and
save cost would precipitate to the customers.

As enterprises deploy the transformative power of blockchain technology, they need to be particular
of their business objectives and needs. To support a huge dependence on this technology,
organizations need to improve speed and scalability of their systems. All the use cases of blockchain,
need to be carefully experimented in each field and not limit to the need of the field concerned. The
roles and responsibilities in an organization will vary with the implementation of blockchain.
Eventually, organizations will have to ensure sudden high training sessions for the employees. Wide
opportunities will exist for roles of protection, security & authorization in each department or business
unit. The complete business units functioning will change for example organizations will adopt new
ways to incentivise and attract customers. Similarly, the other dependent and surrounding
organizations functioning around each other will impact.

For the most used transactions of bitcoin, blockchain can only help to trace until a genuine currency is
converted to bitcoin and it is difficult to know where those bitcoins ended up. Regulations around
blockchain should allow interoperability and also protect end users. As the data is more transparent,
economy takes part in clever distribution of production by right tracing of demand in the market. In
such scenario, government should take part by introducing more friendly policies to support. This
technology can help to alleviate rural distress or economy distress in developing countries by allowing
trade in an efficient way.

The serious threat to securitization of blockchain is unattended. This includes risks as IT and
Operational risks, Counterparty concentration, inappropriate blockchain governance, legal and
regulatory issues. The technology is observed as a threat to existing government as blockchain
technology discards the need of any third-party or central authority for peer-to-peer transactions. Also,
Blockchain overcame the censorship enabled feature by government at the backend in order to access
a domain name management system. By ensuring a private encryption key to make changes to the
record, it made censorship difficult.

As the government doesn’t support any bitcoin transactions it still continues to believe and leverage
the underlying blockchain technology. With the RBI circular released on 6th April, 2018 government
banned all the entities regulated by blockchain from dealing in cryptocurrencies. The anonymous
nature of cryptocurrency can indulge in funding terrorism, corruption or money laundering, tax
evasion. This trading without regulation might impact the overall market. Payments and Settlement
Act, 2007 permit the payment systems that effects electronic transfer. The instrument must store some
monetary value and cryptocurrency (quadrant protocol tokens) may not have any value stored on them
and is contingent on market speculation.
 Various lawmakers, regulators, government authorities are enacting new laws such as France’s
PACTE Law, Wyoming HB70, the Token Taxonomy Act. Currently neither SEC nor SEBI
recognizes cryptocurrency as securities as these are unregulated and have no consumer protection
against fraud. This technology is friendlier to law-enforcers than to law-breakers. Countries are
starting to include blockchain companies in scope of anti-money laundering directive. To promote this
technology along with protecting consumers and money laundering a pro-innovation approach to
regulation is needed. As different use cases come into purview of blockchain, all the stages will be
included into different concerned existing regulations. Governments and regulatory bodies should
realise the shortcomings like blockchain is a one way mathematical function and easy for a criminal to
perform reverse calculations using quantum devices. Similarly, the organizations have to move into
regulations safe zone in order to attract investors and smooth functioning by stating clear of the
currency as virtual or a security token.

Crowdfunding using ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is a mechanism in which a company in conjunction
with raising capital, issues its own tokens without diluting any part of equities. Switzerland is a global
centre for ICOs. Regulatory laws passed in US states permits use of blockchain to hold databases of
corporate documents.

Blockchain is a disruptive technology for its ability to digitise, decentralise, secure and incentivise the
validation of transactions. It fits well in the domain of financial services ensuring tamper proof
record-keeping. In financial services sector or Insurance sector, the major issue of settlement period
can be solved by enabling blockchain to synchronize different database ledgers and hence engage
with customers in the shortest time possible.

Blockchain has scope to create and maintain corporate data and applications with safety and security
among its employees and teams involved from different organizations for collaborating over projects.
Blockchain helps to provide a unified view of the smart contract with all the multiple stakeholders in
the process.

Much of the convenience has improved by Machine learning, Data mining, Artificial Intelligence &
Robotics. Blockchain is altogether a different feature in the new technology serving the much
confidence required in the systems via safety and security. In the business world, Customer is God
and to ensure the best service to customers comes a tipping point of trust. To gain this trust,
transparency of the system is the key. Blockchain helps to leverage these gigantic opportunity in
building relationship with customers. In a similar fashion, employees sitting at various geographic
locations are closer to head offices or central offices and leading to more impact and visibility in the
organization.

Blockchain helps to eliminate the efforts of manual intervention time to time and increases
automation. It ensures safety by giving the control among all peers in the transaction chain thus a
shared infrastructure in an enterprise system. There is no disruption or dependency of the complete
system on any single point of failure. Safety is a factor of encryption of every transaction and hash
linking to previous block. The efforts to manage and overlook the data have been eliminated and
replaced by the users itself in the blockchain technology. The unique ability to hold the complete
history of all the transactions or activities in the chronological order has widespread applications in
the market. Even if a data point or data is corrupted or fraud all the other transactions in the system
are recorded in every other transaction.

Blockchain technology allows transactions in a secure environment. Smart contracts ensure the
fulfilment of terms and conditions and ensure transaction without bias. Blockchain in smart contracts
use case captures all the terms and conditions between an organization & its customer. It then
supervises all the nodes to authorize the payment as soon as the conditions are met. Sensitive
information can be notified and approved by owner of the data before any further processing.

Blockchain has found its place in all the layers of office from front desk to middle desk to back end.
In the front office, it helps in data entry and collection of consumer data for sales enablement, in the
middle desk for operations, procurement & tracking, and in the end office for accounting and cross
border trade. Every organization or each individual is very private about the information it stores
about its identity but stealing of these data continues without the permission of individual or
organization and can be stopped by independent verification process that helps to verify members in
the blockchain before adding them to it.

For supply chain process, big players in the industry like IBM and Maersk have adapted blockchain
by ensuring digitizing supply chain process from end to end and given up on paper trails of tens of
millions of data. The cost incurred on intermediaries is saved. This digitization has helped to improve
transparency and highly secure sharing of information among trading partners removing countless
efforts wasted on managing data and resolving delay in reporting customer queries.

For marketing spends transparency helps to invest in the right manner in the right time thus saving
spends unreturned. For marketing will also come in a more transparent behaviour as the lost trust of
consumers in brands can be re-instated with the veracity of information and more likely in the real
time. By this it means that to consumer what matters beyond imagery and style of a product is its
authenticity of make and design, ethical sourcing, values and transparency.

Cloud was a similar story. The three big players in the cloud industry i.e. AWS, Azure and Google
have already taken steps in combining Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to upscale the
game and increase in automation. It is worth noting that Amazon Web Services accounted for all of
Amazon’s 2017 operating income. These players and others in the market are trying to differentiate in
the services and offerings. Azure and recently AWS has released the blockchain technology in their
own possibility. The highest level of adaption is by the Dubai government in the largest scale to
maintain all the records pertaining to land registry on blockchain. A product’s availability &
accessibility helps the public to adapt to such new technologies & truly the security of data is human
right.