By now, people are starting to wrap their heads around the concepts of Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin.
Dig a little deeper and you’ll find yourself learning what Blockchain Technology is and how it works. But then what, what is the next important concept that one should begin brushing up on?
Smart Contracts.
So what are they?
Well, visually, they look like this:
Simply put, Smart Contracts are self fulfilling, contracts, completely automated and secured. And they have several immediate benefits to being implemented, such as:
- Eliminating Third Parties
- Allowing Strangers To Conduct Business w/o Risk
- Speeds Up Business Transactions
Health Care
Few records are as private as Medical Records. With Smart Contracts, Medical Records can be encoded and saved on blockchain technology. And it’s with this same technology that allows the records to be HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) endorsed, ensuring data privacy and security provisions for all our private medical data. The very same private keys we use to access our cryptocurrency wallets, would be the same blueprint for how our doctors would be able to access our private medical files, updating them in real time keeping them secured. Prescriptions, therapy, surgeries would all be kept track of on smart contracts and could also be accessed by our insurance companies as needed, by the very same private keys that our doctor(s) would use.
Auto
Self Driving Cars are here and have been in our streets for awhile now. Google broke ground years back with their Google Maps cars, giving us the wonderful visual access to any street in the country. Now Elon Musk and his powerhouse company, Tesla, have promised us fully autonomous cars capabilities in their vehicles in the near future - appropriately called the Autopilot feature.
And with the streets filling up with more and more driverless cars, you can count on a transitional phase of more complex accident scenarios.
Smart Contracts will be able to manage an almost infinite amount of variables that factor in after an accident has taken place. This would make it things much easier when determining who was at fault, the car with no driver or the car with a human driver. And insurance companies would be able to also integrate smart contracts to update, track and monitor policies, anywhere at anytime.
Construction | Real Estate
From the construction aspect to the investing sector, the Real Estate Industry will completely be revolutionized by smart contracts.
On the construction side, RFID Chips allow for open monitoring by all necessary parties, in real time. From the investment side, anyone from anywhere can invest into commercial or residential properties with no minimum entry threshold. So essentially, you can now own a fraction or small piece of real estate, across the globe. This makes investing easy, profitable and most importantly, transparent. Smart contracts will play a big role, as they are self-executed and self-governing, controlling both the construction flow and return on everyone’s investments.
But it doesn’t stop there. We can expect dozens more industries to join the future of business transactions and embrace the use of smart contracts; including the Cyber Security, Banking/Payment and Supply Chain Management Industries.
Construction Foreman, Dmitri Starovoitov, also feels that Blockchain Technology and Smart Contracts are the future of how business will be conducted. Starovoitov says that “Blockchain offers a transparent, simultaneous and shared database for all parties to view. Information is embedded in code and protected from deletion, change and tampering, eliminating any risk from the transaction. Businesses that function on contracts with a blockchain transaction have multiple verifications occurring simultaneously across the internet. If one computer in the system goes down, there are an unlimited number more that were working on the same verification and will confirm. Middlemen like brokers, agents, contract lawyers, and bankers would no longer be of need as the blockchain ensures that all parties meet all terms of the agreement.
Dmitri also has encouragement for the next generation of students to begin paying attention to blockchain technology and smart contracts, stating “Smart Contract technology is a must-know in the days to come, as it will definitely change each and every industry all over the globe. So, students should learn things in advance to be able to respond to potential new changes in the most profitable way.”
Whether you’re in business or a student trying to stay ahead of the curve, you certainly should become more familiar with Smart Contracts as they will undoubtedly shape the way all facets of business is conducted from here on out.