Hello Future: The Rise of Blockchain and Its Implications

The Internet is widely seen as the greatest invention of the past century. It has transformed how we live, opening up vast knowledge, instant information and global social connection. Ironically, the same access has also fed fraud and eroded trust between people.

Blockchain fits best where several parties need a shared record and do not fully trust one another. Before adopting it, ask whether a simple shared database would already solve the problem, since the extra complexity has real costs.

Whether you’re a coffee shop owner looking to import some high quality coffee beans, or you’re simply trying to find a nice dress on an online shop, you’re prone to the same risk of being conned. In the same way that you cannot verify whether you’re buying high quality fair trade beans before receiving them, neither will you be able to tell whether the dress you’re buying would look the same as it does on the website in its real form. The key to solving this trust and verification issue? Blockchain.

As a decentralised, distributed digital public ledger, Blockchain enables transactions to be recorded and linked across a high number of computers, meaning alterations to any records would also require further changes to subsequent transactions, making Blockchain theoretically unalterable. Blockchain rose to popularity as the underlying technology behind popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and in recent years, leading corporations like IBM, JP Morgan, Intel and the Linus Foundations have led a Hyperledger project to develop Blockchain Technology on enterprise application level.

Why all the hype? Blockchain may not transform every profession, but several niche industries stand to gain from its tamper-resistant record-keeping. Beyond cryptocurrency in finance, it can track goods from supplier to delivery, reduce insurance fraud by recording claims and payments, and cut out middlemen by reducing the need to rely on good faith in contracts between individuals and organisations. These are only a few examples of how it could reshape key industries.

With Blockchain, we fill a void culminated by the lack of trust built by the Internet, and complete its biggest flaw. Blockchain is technology’s great step into, and ultimately is, the future.

If you want to take a closer look at how Blockchain works and its applications in the real world, Coffee is hosting Blockchain 101 workshop in which the founder of will take the audience through the brief history of Blockchain, how it works as a decentralised mechanism, and why it is one of the most important innovations in the 21st century.