"Blockchain Through the Eyes of a Fintech Fund Leading VC Investor" - EMVC Interviewed on Opportunities for Blockchain in Emerging Markets
Excerpts of the interview with Ahsan Khalid below:
Blockchain technology is erupting out on the global scale as the technology of the future. Aspects like immutability, decentralization, transparency etc. make it stand out among the rest of the emerging technologies at the moment. Some people even go as far as to call it the ‘new internet’. It possesses the potential to revamp various centralized frameworks that are prevalent today in the modern industries.
Its major use-case is currently being seen in the financial arena. But besides finance, can it be used to revamp other industries? And how this technology is expected to evolve in the future? BlockPublisher recently got in touch with the Melissa Frakman, Founder & Managing Partner at EMVC Fintech Fund, as she expressed her thoughts regarding this technology. The following Q&A with Melissa depicts the perspective put forward by her.
Which industries can benefit from blockchain?
Melissa: “There are opportunities to apply decentralized technology, including blockchains, across so many industries, from global payments to accounting to supply chain infrastructure. In particular, industries ripe with inefficiencies not solved by technological innovation over the past decade can benefit from emerging blockchain solutions. For example, in countries where corruption stops trade externalities (such as lower prices) from reaching last-mile consumers, startups building immutable traceability platforms have a massive opportunity for impact and scale.”
Is it the new internet?
Melissa: “No, however I’m excited to see how our frameworks for distribution of goods, information, and services are radically transformed in the coming decades by new technology including blockchains.”
How do you see it evolving in the future?
Melissa: “I am bullish on the opportunity for leapfrog solutions applying blockchain in emerging markets where less existing incumbent infrastructure is present. For instance, the financial sectors of countries across South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa are primed to leverage new payments and commerce platforms over high cost and inconvenient legacy banking systems just as they went straight to mobile phones, leapfrogging home telephone lines.”
Although blockchain might not be the new internet, it sure seems that it does possess the ability to influence various sectors of life such as healthcare, supply chain, logistics etc. The blockchain world is still pretty nascent right now but the developments are being made in it at a very rapid pace, especially for the past few years. Attention is being given to problems like scalability, privacy etc. so that large-scale adoption of this tech can be made possible. It will be interesting to see how many industries this technology is able to penetrate as we move forward in 2019.