McKinsey report claims that long-term, private 'permissioned' blockchain networks will be more successful than public decentralized ones like Bitcoin
A new research report claims that, despite a huge amount of interest and investment in blockchain, the technology is still three to five years away from widespread commercial adoption.
The report, produced by global management consultants McKinsey, points out that in the past two years alone there have been more than half a million new publications on blockchain, and that Google searches of the term now deliver around 3.7 million results. Venture-capital funding for blockchain start-ups consistently grew and hit $1 billion in 2017 while initial coin offerings “skyrocketed” to $5 billion.
The report, written by McKinsey Australia, also cites World Economic Forum data that estimates that within ten years, blockchain will handle 10 percent of world trade and says leading technology players are also investing heavily in blockchain. The McKinsey report, entitled “Blockchain beyond the hype: What is the strategic business value?“, says IBM has more than 1,000 staff and $200 million invested in its blockchain-powered Internet of Things projects.
However, after evaluating the feasibility of the technology against more than 90 potential “use cases” the McKinsey report concludes that while “many companies are already experimenting, meaningful scale remains three to five years away.”
Blockchain’s core advantages, says the report, are “decentralization, cryptographic security, transparency, and immutability”. It goes on to argue that there is not one “singular form of blockchain” but numerous configurations that can “meet the objectives and commercial requirements of a particular use case.”...MORE
