Understanding Blockchain Technology

“You will not learn about how the blockchain works, but how the blockchain works for you,” Stephen Meade, CEO of MonetaPro, said in as the opening presenter at the Unblocking the Blockchain CREW San Diego event this week. The event was dedicated to explaining how blockchain technology can disrupt and benefit business processes. In addition to Meade, speakers included Lynn LaChappelle, senior managing director at JLL; Eric Linxwiler, senior sales management executive at CBX Software; Anup Marwadi, CEO of Hypertrends Global.

Most people think of crypto currencies, like Bitcoin, but blockchain is actually the security technology behind crypto currencies, explained Meade, and it could be used by real estate companies to move contracts, promote and track food security and in banking to enhance data security. Think about how the Internet impacted your business,” he said. “How did the Internet disrupt or displace your business? Was it positive? Or negative? It’s not a disruption, it’s a displacement. Blockchain is going to disrupt your processes and ultimately make them better. How do you want the technology to work for you?”

Marwadi, who was the second presenter, also compared blockchain to the changes that the Internet brought, quoting a Harvard Business Review that said blockchain would do for financial systems what the Internet did for media. “Blockchain is still in its infancy, but a lot of people are working to change that,” he said. However, it took it a step further to explain why blockchain is special: it is secure. “Once you write data to it, you cannot change it,” he explained. The will allow companies to store data to a fixed chain and it is secure. Additionally, because the data is fixed, the output will always be the same. “The technology is tamper proof. It is a globally distributed database that is decentralized by nature,” he added. “So far there have been a few attacks, but the problem was in the programming.”

Linxwiler picked up the conversation with a discussion about how blockchain could be used by retailers to enhance the supply chain and increase retention. “Retail has had a tremendous revolution in the last few years. Consumers are incredibly critical, connected and choosey,” he said. “Retailers are having issues to bring products to the market. The economy is highly challenging right now. It has a lot of ebb and flow in it.” A third of customers have named trust has the most important aspect of a brand. Buyers want transparency in the products they buy. “The supply chain of retailers touches every part of the world. Blockchain can potential start to knit all this together,” he added. “Blockchain can offer compression in the supply chain.”

For commercial real estate specifically, blockchain has the potential to revolutionize the industry, according to LaChappelle, who closed the conversation. Blockchain could create a safe secure space for all parties to view documents from start-to-finish during the deal process. “From an engineering and design standpoint, this ability could be ground shifting,” she explained. “The immutability of blockchain could also bring more transparency to all sorts of transactions.” This is particularly true for complicated transactions with foreign entities. “It is going to take time to implement this technology into real estate,” she added. “Home sales may be an early adopter. But you will still need agents.”