We cannot stress enough how important it is for business owners to understand the current trends in finance. If you are running a small or medium business, you surely want to extend your reach, while making your life easier and all transactions faster. The magic word here is—blockchain. Its power and prominence in today’s market cannot be denied, so why not board the blockchain train yourself? Implementing it into your business can be a huge boost because it has so many advantages.
This article will try to provide an exhaustive list of benefits that blockchain brings to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). When you finish reading, a good additional read would be Cryptocurrency accounting for businesses.
Table of Contents
What Do You Get From Blockchain Technology – In Short
A blockchain keeps a digital record of transactions and balances. Storing information in this way greatly differs from using a bank. A bank stores your information on a computer. Information on the blockchain is not stored in one place but is spread among users on that blockchain. This is why we say it is peer-to-peer-based.
Data management is done by the users themselves. By doing that, overall management authority is cut into hundreds of pieces and spread.
How is safety kept on the blockchain? We won’t go into every detail here, but let’s just say that the blocks of information are connected in such a way that if a user does anything suspicious, he would be instantly exposed to other users. If you want to learn more about blockchain, sites like tradecrypto.com are a great place to start.
Obvious Benefits
You can guess the most obvious benefits yourself, which occur naturally when you eliminate the middleman:
- Time-saving: You waste a lot less time when processing your transactions.
- Cost saving: You have fewer expenses without an intermediary.
- Less paperwork: Everything is recorded on the blockchain.
Here is now a short review of the most important perks you get by implementing blockchain:
A) A New Form of Payment
First and foremost, payments are the lifeblood of any business. There is no better way to get into the blockchain system than to enable cryptocurrency payments for your customers. This is also the thing that will boost your growth the most.
The first step is to do serious research on various crypto payment services, gateways, digital wallets, and different cryptocurrencies. Nothing speaks to customers’ hearts better than showing initiative to broaden your services, and plus, contemporary customers are very fond of crypto.
B) Safer and Cheaper Cloud Storage
Storing data on the blockchain means keeping it on a decentralized network. This is done by taking empty space from the hard disks of all users. It is a great alternative to centralized cloud storage: it’s cheaper, with better security, reliability, and customization options due to the fact that:
- Data loss is prevented across hundreds of nodes, which does not create redundant information like centralized storage does.
- Security is stronger because it is harder for hackers to access data that is spread in such a way. No one controls the files and decryption keys other than the users, as no third party is involved.
- Great customization options come with blockchain cloud storage, such as speed of retrieval.
C) Smart Contracts
This is a relatively recent addition to already fruitful blockchain possibilities. Businesses can now automate contracts with everyone involved, including employees, clients, and suppliers.
In turn, this can reduce costs and make the entire process easier and faster since there is no mediator. This shows in great detail that blockchain can handle much more than just cryptocurrency.
D) Businesses Can Use Crypto To Raise Capital
The key concept here is called ITO (initial token offerings). Take a regular company working on a centralized technology. They distribute their revenue in a “normal” way, by cooperating with centralized banks, lenders, and so on. What ITO brings is a different option for capital raising.
The tokens can be used in exchanges and traded without limits. They can be a part of the company’s specific service or just value you hold as stocks. A great recent lending protocol that we recommend is called Aave, and you can start by learning more about it in this Aave crypto review. Revenue here is shared precisely through tokens being bought and traded across the market. As a result, this brings liquidity closer to everyone.
Conclusion
Since 9 out of 10 businesses in the world are small or medium-sized, their role in shaping the course of the economy as a whole is immeasurable. This is why the blockchain trend is meant to evolve in small businesses. By implementing it after reading this article, we hope you will also become a part of this great revolution.
