There is more news every day about what could, could and could happen in the world of cryptocurrencies (CC’s) and blockchains. Significant investments, research, and lots of talk have been made, but currency and projects are still not mainstream. They have not yet delivered the explosive change imagined. Many ideas are being discussed and developed, but none have yielded big game-changing results. For big industry players like IBM, Microsoft and big financial services corporations it may be necessary to move forward in developing useful blockchain applications – without which the whole world cannot survive.
Financial services are a worthy target for blockchain projects because today’s banking systems are still based on ancient concepts that have been faithfully and painstakingly digitized, and these systems are old, expensive to maintain and operate. Banks have a good reason to charge high service fees – their systems are not efficient These systems contain many layers of unnecessary data, as everyone involved in the transaction must have a version of the transaction details. And then there’s the business of making sure there’s a trusted third party to clear all these transactions – more versions of the same data are needed. Blockchain technology promises to solve these problems, as each transaction will capture only one block of the chain and since it is a distributed database, security and integrity are built-in and guaranteed. The traditional clearing houses that blockchain transaction verifiers use and trust banks today may take some time to build trust in these new systems. It will take time for the bank to gain confidence in a new technology, and it will take longer to pass that confidence on to consumers.
Another company that may soon be ready to give CC’s and Blockchain a big boost is Amazon. It looks like Amazon is getting ready to launch their own cryptocurrency. It is a company whose income is the size of a good-sized country, and they are in a position to issue a digital token that will be fully convertible with other CC and Fiat currencies. Such a move would enable Amazon:
- Coins to reward and encourage developers on any issue (AMAZON) platform
- Issue coins to customers to use for in-app purchases
- Issue coins to game players to buy virtual goodies in the game
- Issue coins to regular customers as part of a loyalty program
Amazon’s customers and partners may have the ideal ecosystem to make all this happen. They have about 300 million customer accounts worldwide, roughly the population of the United States, and 100,000 sellers on their platform, with a few million items for sale. There are no more mainstream companies than Amazon, where a huge, vibrant economy is all involved. Amazon’s upcoming entry into the world of CC could signal the adoption of blockchain technology on a large scale by mainstream organizations. What happens when an AMAZON coin is introduced is a Disney coin, a Delta Airlines coin, a Carnival Cruise coin, a Home Depot coin – you get the picture.
Stay tuned!