ABSTRACT
The blockchain technology holds the potential to revolutionize the technology space and have far-reaching effects. Instead of using the existing Internet network for incremental changes in the conventional business architecture, it stands to change the rules of the game altogether. The Internet space was meant to offer decentralization, but ended up with a handful of humongous, very powerful, heavily centralized institutions. These huge tech-based companies hold a lot of data of their customers, their transactions, their banking details, etc. in a few centralized locations. The data is vulnerable to theft, cyberattacks, or any misuse that might lead to distrust among customers. Blockchain technology offers a solution to this problem by letting data available on multiple systems at the same time. Hence, it decentralizes the entire network and lets every node have the same data which can’t be altered or manipulated without getting a majority consensus from the network. Blockchain technology would bring about structural, but not incremental, changes in the way businesses function through increased transparency and security. It has received every possible response it could have from countries around the world. Countries such as Japan, Canada, and Mauritius want to embrace it wholeheartedly so much so that they even accept cryptocurrency (a product of blockchain) as a legal tender for transactions. On the other hand, countries such as Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam have banned its possession, trade, and usage citing security reasons. Remaining countries lie somewhere in between the spectrum where they accept cryptocurrency for some purposes like taxation, but not for others.
