TheBusinessResearchCompany.com offers Blockchain Technologies Global Market Report 2019 from its latest offering added to its Information Technology/ IT Category
The global blockchain technologies market was valued at about $2.01 billion in 2018, and is expected to grow to $9.97 billion at a rapid annual growth rate of more than 49% through 2022. Companies across various industries are increasingly investing in block chain technology due to its high efficiency in data management. Blockchain technology is growing strongly in major sectors such as healthcare, banking and finance, digital assets, and also in several government departments. Thus, companies such as VISA, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon are investing in the technology to integrate blockchain with their daily operations at an early stage. Companies use block chain technology to create smart contracts, which helps to speed up payment processes as well as provide support while investing in stock exchange. In 2018, Diar, a blockchain research group, reported that block chain focused start-ups have used various venture capital funding methods to raise close to $3.9 billion.
Blockchain is a technology which involves the implementation of a distributed database that is accessible to all the users over a network. Each user can add a new data record (block), with a timestamp that cannot be altered. Each new block forms a part of the universally acceptable depository. Block chain technology maintains the authentication of data by restricting changes in the older data blocks, while allowing the users to continue adding new data blocks, thus, making the manipulation of data such as faking documents or transactions and other information, impossible. Blockchain technology is used to create digital contracts, and in domains such as financial, healthcare and insurance.
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Security Vulnerabilities In The Blockchain Technologies Market
The growth of the blockchain technology market is being restrained due to the security vulnerabilities that companies in this market are facing, such as weak systems and human errors. The platforms used to interact with the blockchain technology lacks necessary security. The blockchain industry lost an estimated amount of $3.55 billion between 2011 and 2018, due to the technical flaws leading to lack of security in blockchain technology. For instance, Mt. Gox, a Japanese cryptocurrency company, collapsed when it lost $450 million worth of bitcoins, which was due to security breaches between 2011 and 2014. In another instance reported in January 2018, a Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange named Coincheck suffered a loss of $534.8 million when a hacker used hacking software and unethically transferred NEM (New Economy Movement) coins worth more than $500 million to his account. NEM is a peer to peer (P2P) cryptocurrency launched in 2015. A P2P cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency exchange that takes place between two parties without the intervention of any middlemen. These transactions are made over the block chain network.
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Blockchain is increasingly being implemented in many back-office processes at industries from traditional banking and insurance, extending its application to even food production and pharmaceutical industries. For instance, in 2018, Walmart, along with the support of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), adopted a program that uses blockchain to digitize the food supply chain process with its pork suppliers. With the help of the IBM blockchain platform, it takes Walmart only 2.2 seconds to trace the source of food, thus, reducing the likelihood of infected food that might reach the customers. Applying the same principle in 2018, Starbucks announced its plans for using block chain with the aim to improve pricing among its coffee suppliers and allow customers to track the origin of their coffee beans with the concept of “Bean to cup”.
Major players in the global blockchain technologies market are IBM, AWS, Microsoft Corporations, Ripple, and Circle Internet Financial Limited. Companies have been investing in merger and acquisition activity to strengthen and expand their businesses. In 2018, NXMH, a Belgium-based investment company, acquired Bitstamp for $400 million. Bitstamp is a Europe based digital currency exchange company founded in 2011. It has a turnover of $100 million per day. With this acquisition, NXMH plans to support Bitstamp in its global expansion by providing the necessary financial support.
