It’s been just over a decade since Satoshi Nakamoto – or at least the animal, mineral or vegetable that the name represents – conceptualised the first blockchain. And, whilst the forums of FinTech are alive with talk of blockchain, you could be forgiven for suggesting that real world application is currently at a premium. You might have a point – if your point was suggesting real world application of blockchain was at a premium.
You probably won’t be paying for your chai latte via distributed ledger payment technology at your local coffee house in the near future – although the technology does exist. Likewise, the trusty landlord of your local drinker has no plans to introduce a blockchain system to track the life cycle of the barrels of pale ale lying in pools of rusty water in his dank cellar – although he could.
Although not yet popularised, you can find creative uses of blockchain knocking about, if you know where to look. Here’s a selection I found earlier – I know where to look.
Cryptocurrency in football – blockchain enters the Turkish transfer market
The FinTech/football connection is apparently no new thing. At the beginning of 2018 was the first transfer completed using cryptocurrency. Turkish club Harunutaspor splashed the crypto-cash to sign Omer Faruk Kiroglu for 0.05324 BTC, plus some Turkish Lira.
Sure, it’s not a vast sum of cryptocurrency (£386). And sure, we may not see Eden Hazard’s presumed departure to Real Madrid involve Bitcoin. But, it does signal to a quiet whisper of blockchain application in the sporting sphere.
Art dealing – the creative world opens its arms to distributed ledger technology
The art market has joined the blockchain party. London based startup Verisart creates blockchain based digital certificates for artwork, securing provenance in an incorruptible data chain from the moment of a piece’s creation.
Transparent trading histories recorded via the distributed ledger technology will allow for greater security in the piece’s legitimacy. Forgery and fraud is rife in the art industry, and over half of the pieces examined by the Fine Art Experts Institute in Geneva are discovered to be fake or wrongly attributed.
You can understand why a blockchain ledger might be a rather attractive proposition for the art world.
Tracing food supply – horse meat can’t hurt you any more
In 2013 the British public discovered they were consuming a diet more closely related to the Dothraki hordes than that of classic British cuisine. The horse meat scandal swept major supermarket shelves as frozen meats and microwaveable lasagnes were withdrawn from shelves for fear of undeclared horse meat contamination.
Well, the days of accidental equine ingestion could be over thanks to blockchain technology. IBM Food Trust uses exactly that to track food from farm to table. The security of a blockchain ledger allows the accurate tracking of food travelling a long distance to reach the end user.
Blockchain spells bad times for the illicit horse meat industry.
CryptoKitties – like a Tamagotchi you can pay quite ridiculous sums of cryptocurrency for
If you prefer virtual to palpable cats, then this could be the game for you. Using the Ethereum blockchain, CryptoKitties allows you to while away the hours trading digital cats with other avid fans of recreational blockchain use.
Debuting in late 2017, CryptoKitties generated more than $1.3 million in transactions of virtual cats in just over a month. These CryptoKitties can fetch a pretty penny, the “genesis” kitten sold for a record $113,000.
Kittens can be bought, sold, bred or – rather sinisterly – destroyed. For the cat lovers out there, the future is yours.
Long Blockchain Corp. – Tripling a struggling iced tea company’s share prices
Words are a powerful thing. Struggling drinks manufacturer Long Island Iced Tea Corp. changed its fortunes overnight when some bright spark capitalised on the zeitgeist and changed the company’s name to Long Blockchain Corp.
With no assurance of any definitive blockchain strategy, the iced tea maker’s share prices shot up 300%. You don’t need a solid business plan to stay afloat in the Nasdaq Stock Market when you can ride the wave of hype.
Long Blockchain Corp. will still be leveraging the iced tea brand. This is probably just a precautionary measure, in case any loyal customers are unable to seamlessly swap an iced tea habit for a blockchain one.
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