6 Surprising Ways Blockchain Technology Is Being Used

When most people hear “blockchain” and technology in the same sentence, the automatic association is Bitcoin or one of its many altcoins, perhaps even cryptocurrency in general. If you dig a little deeper into bitcoin on the internet, you might see articles highlighting that blockchain technology is the key to the future, especially in financial fields. This should get everyone’s trading 101 senses tingling as there are far more applications to blockchain technology than many are aware of. In the technology sector especially, blockchain is being touted as the next big player in protecting assets and preventing malicious hacking attempts. Let’s look at some different ways that blockchain technology is being applied that might surprise you.

1) Preventing Voter Fraud

The last few years have seen several political instances in several countries where the legitimacy of the voting process was called into question in certain elections. Some instances saw votes being counted several times while in some cases, voters were able to cast more than one vote. There are several NGOs and start-up companies developing technology based on blockchain to ensure that voting is done legitimately. In this type of blockchain application, instead of money, each token represents a vote in the ledger. Geopolitical crises have large implications for many traders and investors, as covered in every trading 101 class, so this is one to look out for.

2) Sexual Consent

Given the recent drama in USA’s Hollywood around sexual harassment with many female actors coming out to share their accounts of sexual assault, several companies and have sprung up in the wake to provide solutions around these problems. One of these companies is based in Amsterdam and created an application called LegalFling. As the name implies, LegalFling uses a modified version of blockchain technology adapted to recording sexual consent. The app allows users to indicated what they’re consenting to in a sexual context, and the acceptance thereof gets recorded in the blockchain.

3) Solar Energy

Solar energy is one of the fastest growing commodity, with the price of solar panels dropping more and more to make the technology accessible. A startup company called LO3 Energy has developed an application in which solar panel owners can sell the power they’ve harvested to others without going through an energy company or distributor.

4) Video Games

Some new video games have been using blockchain and cryptocurrencies to facilitate the trading of in-game items. Some of these have seen millions of dollars’ worth of transactions in the game via cryptocurrencies, allow for scam-less trading and secure transactions.

5) Converting time to Money

We’ve all heard the age-old saying: time is money as well as our most valuable resource. A prolific startup fonder by the name of Evan Prodromou developed his own cryptocurrency which adds a monetary value to his time as many different people are looking to meet him – his initial coin offering was $15 per token which represented 1 hour of his time. A few weeks after, the value of said token rose to $45. This is still cheaper than what he’d charge for regular consulting hours but gave him valuable insight on blockchain technology.

6) Tracking Medical Records

If you simplify it, blockchain at the end of the day boils down to being the most secure record-keeping system. One of the most important records kept for everyone is the medical record. One such application for tracking medical records is Dentacoin, which tracks dental records for patients. Every time a procedure is done, the patient can add it to their Dentacoin record, and can bring that information to a different dentist for instance.