Adoption of Blockchain and Crypto Set to Expand in Scotland
Distributed Ledger Technology and its most known product — cryptocurrency — has been the talking point in the finance world for its many advantages. It has frequently been touted as the next big technological innovation to revolutionize the financial sector. Now, as reported by the Scotsman (Scotland’s national news outlet), industry experts are advocating the replacement of the existing IT infrastructure with blockchain and cryptocurrency in financial institutions.
The ScotChain18 conference in Edinburgh provided a stage for impactful speeches from prominent names in the technology sector. These revealed that although the eagerness of a large group of companies to adopt DLT in their system was impressive, their existing infrastructure made the required integration quite impossible without expert support. The other hurdle that was discussed was the lack of adequate regulation and standardization in the field of blockchain in the country.
Scotland is emerging as one of the geographic locations to watch out for for a wide range of use cases of blockchain. A number of collaborations between their government, academic institutions, the private sector and the evolving tech sector are already underway. One of the first areas outside of finance where DLT will be implemented is the real estate sector. As per the data collected in 2014, migration to blockchain in the UK potentially added USD 77.54 billion in the accommodation and food service sector.
The technology is currently being modulated by the government and a software development company to monitor the rate of increase in rent to give tenants a more just rent experience. Currently, the unavailability of data has made it difficult for councils to regulate the cost of housing, and provided scope to landlords to indiscriminately inflate rent.
Registering for and counting votes during elections is the other administrative area blockchain is set to be implemented in in Scotland. One of the primary reasons that brought the need to switch to high-tech to light is the massive cost of £15.85M in taxpayer money that was incurred with archaic paper slip 2014 referendum.
The technology is valued for the transparency it lends to ledgers, especially crucial ones which could decide who gets to hold important offices in government elections. This is because the decentralized distributed ledger makes it mathematically impossible to hack into and manipulate the numbers stored in the digital register. The data stored in the blockchain is protected by cryptographic algorithms identified by a unique hash. The ledger is democratic, and is duplicated and spread over numerous nodes. Basically, the power over the ledger is not retained in just a single machine accessible to any particular individual or groups of individual.
The blockchain technology is being broadly implemented to bring greater traceability and accountability to supply chains across industries. Scotland, in particular, relies greatly on several of such, including construction, biotechnology, transport equipment, oil and gas, whisky production, and tourism. Companies eager to up their game to beat competition are roping in software development companies even from other countries, such as California based HashCash Consultants, to integrate blockchain into their systems. Going by the example of the steps being taken to incorporate DLT in the finance sector in the country, it will be wise for tech-watchers to keep an eye on the other sectors mentioned to see blockchain flourish in the Scottish Isles.
