Should Businesses Embrace Crypto and Blockchain?
While financial experts were once bullish about the future of cryptocurrencies, it seems like media pundits have lost most of their enthusiasm. Many small business owners are left wondering whether they should embrace blockchain technology or consider it something of a passing fad. One of the major issues that tend to get passed over in all the confusion is that while cryptocurrencies rely on blockchain code, there are countless beneficial uses of it that have nothing to do with financial transactions.
Why Businesses Are Embracing It
Engineers are coming up with new blockchain-based solutions on a daily basis. At least one organization has employed the technology as part of a massively distributed cloud storage network. On top of this, many e-commerce sites are looking at accepting Bitcoin as an alternative payment option.
The online job market reflects these trends. Maryville University explains that job postings mentioning “blockchain”, “bitcoin” or “cryptocurrency” have increased 621 percent since November 2015 on Indeed.com. Additionally, there has been a 1,065 percent growth in searches for jobs mentioning these terms. Those looking for careers in cryptocurrency development clearly have plenty of jobs to choose from.
Staying Private in an Increasingly Public World
As the name suggests, blockchains keep track of a growing list of records by attaching them together one after another. Each of these records is called blocks. Mofluid explains that since they’re resistant to being modified once they’re recorded, these records tend to stay far more secure than those stored in traditional data structures.
Considering that sensitive information is often made public as a result of unfortunate data breaches, companies will likely look toward cryptographic ledgers as a way of storing information more securely. No one wants to repeat the big security breaches of the recent past that caused millions of passwords to become publicly available.
Not Everyone is a Fan
Cryptographic ledger structures are complex to maintain, so there are some notable detractors. Add to this the fact that the hardware required to implement it represents a major capital investment, and you’ll start to find plenty of opponents. Perhaps the biggest criticism directed toward cryptocurrencies, in particular, is the turbulent nature of the market.
In spite of any criticisms, crypto technology continues to evolve. Several larger enterprise-level businesses have recently opted to integrate these solutions into the services that they offer. It’s only a matter of time before small business owners start to wonder whether they’d be a good fit for them as well.
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