Why Merchants and Consumers Need the Blockchain

Why am I so excited about blockchain technology? As I mentioned before, I’ve been around through two startup industries that have change the very fabric of our society - Personal Computers and the Internet. It doesn’t take a clear crystal ball to see that a third has arrived - the blockchain.

Let’s look at a few of the promises that heralded the arrival of the Internet. As the internet developed, it had great promise of being a boon for small and mid sized business. At last, an unending supply of potential customers and a way to level the playing field that was dominated by the big guys. And for a while, that is how it worked.

People like me went out and showed local and small business owners how this new online thing could benefit their bottom line. We became ambassadors for the internet, without even realizing that was what we were doing. We helped contribute to its meteoric growth and helped mom and pop shops and small manufacturers and independent service companies increase their customer base and their bottom lines.

But then along came the big guns. The name brand companies who finally figured out how important the Internet could be to growing and keeping their business. Small startups grew up into the behemoths we see today - Amazon, FaceBook and all its offshoots, Google and all its subsidiaries. Governments and big business began to see that if they could control the internet, they could control the people.

It took a while to wrap my head around the incredible idea that the apps and programs and initiatives I was seeing being built on top of blockchain technology were actually geared towards putting the people in charge, without megacorp ownership and government control. Not only did this mean the playing field was truly leveled, it was leveled on a global scale.

In a famous movie about dinosaurs, Dr. Malcolm was fond of saying “Life always finds a way”. I have been watching first hand as the ordinary people who are part of the communities on the blockchain are finding the way. The way to accomplish things great and small that don’t have the heavy hand of government legislation or the prying fingers of data mining corporations involved in the use and growth of the programs and initiatives that enrich and enhance their lives.

This tsunami has been rather quiet, allowing the headlines to screech about the ups and downs of cryptocurrencies and ICO’s and speculate on who Satoshi Nakamoto really is. All the while building a place for those who want an online economy that is driven by true free trade - not marketing hype and big budgets.

In the land of today’s dinosaurs, the internet flourishes through the sale of customer data, obtained by fair means and foul. Opinions on just about anything are formed through carefully crafting ads, some of which masquerade as social media posts, product reviews, blog articles and ratings from real people. In actual fact many of these are merely content cranked out by media agencies and targeted to a specific audience based on the data companies like FaceBook, Amazon and YouTube have collected from their unwitting users. These media companies pay dearly for the privilege of cluttering up social media feeds, bombarding the net with millions of “review” and “advice” sites and dumping hundreds of thousands of minutes of video on highly targeted internet audiences.

There is no way for small and even mid sized businesses and entrepreneurs to compete for the eyeballs and wallets of the millions upon millions of customers the internet promised to deliver in its infancy.

Yet places like Steemit and Ono and others are offering a choice to beleaguered users and merchants alike. As data abuses and the sordid details of these standard internet practices comes to light, FaceBook and Twitter are losing members on an hourly basis. Amazon is missing sales projections and watching its stock lose its luster.

As word of the true freedom the blockchain offers spreads, people around the world may see that while the internet hasn’t given it’s last gasp yet, its days may be numbered and it may go the way of the dinosaurs who came before it. The alternative of an innovative system that doesn’t collect personal data for resale to those who can meet its price, that is free from government surveillance, and media manipulation might be just the answer the online world was looking for.

A truly level playing field for both merchants and consumers.

All images courtesy of Pixaby.com