As humans, we’re always looking for ways to lower our uncertainties in everything we do. In our everyday life for example, how we act individually or in groups, how we take decisions or how we exchange values between us, everything is reduced to the fact we are trying to lower our uncertainties and make our life easier.

Over time we learned to lean on institutions to lower these uncertainties:  formal institutions, banks for currency, governments, corporations. All of these helped us manage our trade over time as all uncertainties and complexity in life grew, and our control over them was much lower.

Now, what has this to do with Blockchain technology?

Well, with time and the advancement of new technologies, all these institutions moved on the virtual world, so on the Internet. Economic platforms were built with the purpose to facilitate human economic activities, but at the same they provided us with different uncertainties in terms of online identity, security and transparency.

For the first time we are facing a radical evolution of how we interact and trade, because now we can lower uncertainty not only with political and economic institutions, like banks, corporations and governments, but we can do it using technology alone. 

Blockchain technology is indeed a decentralised database that stores an archive of assets and transactions across a peer-to-peer network. In simpler words, it acts like a public registry of who owns what and who transacts what.  Security is respected since all transactions are secured using cryptography, and over time, that transaction history gets locked in blocks of data cryptographically linked together and secured. This creates an undeniable, unforgeable record of all the transactions across this network. This record is replicated on every computer that uses the network. 

Blockchains give us the technological ability to generate a record of human exchange and, somehow, it will become a new a technological institution, with the same benefits of traditional institutions we're used to in our society, but with the extra benefit of doing it in a decentralised way. 

By doing so, blockchain technology converts a lot of our uncertainties into certainties. 

Blockchain can be a revolutionary technology for lots of institutions and large companies, but it could be even more transforming for Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs). In fact, for those willing to acknowledge that decentralisation is the future of modern business, it could solve many of the major challenges SMEs face on a daily basis, such as payment transparency, supply chain issues, cybercrime and the lack of essential information to conduct business efficiently. Last, but not least, blockchain technology for SMEs could also level the field when it comes to competing against larger enterprises.

That's why BCT4SMEs is hoping to support SMEs to implement this revolutionary technology to fulfil their potential and achieve greater success.

Sources

L., C., England, J., & Galvin, J. (2020, June 26). How blockchain is helping SMEs. FinTech Magazine. https://fintechmagazine.com/banking/how-blockchain-helping-smes?fbclid=IwAR39MIclu8_1Vu5LjaPBMXrjazpG2zkc8ovFiU6kvz0x_z2jpZWMrNzuBAg

Warburg, B. (2016, November 15). How the blockchain will radically transform the economy. TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/bettina_warburg_how_the_blockchain_will_radically_transform_the_economy