Blockchain is data, not currency

Being very new to the blockchain and cryptocurrency explosion that's currently going on, when I ask people about blockchain the first thing always mentioned is Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. Which is very true, but blockchain IS NOT just cryptocurrency. At its core, it's a great way to store and preserve data. I believe this is where people are missing the big picture on blockchain. In my experience, as I work for a large cyber security company, people are worried about securing and preserving their crypto wallets and everything, and that's all fine and dandy, but what about taking that ideology outside of cryptocurrency and take it into say data preservation. That's what this article is about, taking blockchain and revolutionizing the world.

What is blockchain?

In simple plain layman's terms a block chain is a chain of data that can always be referenced back to the first block and previous blocks cannot be edited. Blockchain is the base of pretty much all cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Etherium, and others. It was created in 2008 and officially released in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto.

What else can blockchain be used for?

Short answer... EVERYTHING. Think about keeping track of records, any records. If you have a standardized format that you know you can follow for the lifetime of the records, you can have a complete view of each record and not have to worry about anyone tampering with that previous data. That's what you call piece of mind when you need to reference an old version of a document... It's like GitHub or any other type of version control platform out there... but for data, and the old data can never be overwritten or lost.

How can blockchain revolutionize the world?

Not to give away some of the things I'm working on myself, but let's take the collecting industry for example. If you're at an auction or you're looking to purchase say a valuable coin. Wouldn't it be great as a buyer to know when the item was first sold, how much it was appraised for, how much it actually sold for, what the original grade is on the coin, and be able to see that same data through each owner so you can see a trend or how well it was taken care of and how its price has changed since its original sell? This could be critical information for a buyer to make a solid informed decision about the product he's purchasing. The buyer might have gone in expecting to buy the coin for $1 million, but in fact the coin was in the beginning a high mint rating and now it's 3 levels lower. That can tell the buyer that the coin was not properly taken care of and the coin could potentially lose value do to degradation.

This was just a small example of how blockchain could revolutionize the world, because it has a practical use in every market, vertical, and industry.

Let me know your thoughts about this subject I'm always interest in learning and bouncing ideas and topics.