“Blockchain, not Bitcoin” is a common refrain from those skeptical of cryptocurrencies.

Is the technology underlying Bitcoin better suited for other purposes, and if so, what are they?

Furthermore, if these are valuable solutions, why haven’t they been developed yet?

We’ll answer these questions in the following few paragraphs.

What is a blockchain?

Blockchains are basically redundant databases.

Think one-hundred-entry accounting.

All of those entries are public, so anyone can verify them.

Most companies don’t want completely transparent books, and most public data isn’t worth paying 100 times (or more) the standard rate to store.

Most data doesn’t need the redundancy/transparency that blockchains offer, but some does.

Data which is at risk of being censored or tampered with may be worth paying one hundred times the price to store on-chain.

Decentralized applications (dApps)

Applications built on decentralized blockchains are called dApps.

Most of the dApps which have been created have too much data to fit on a blockchain, or don’t require censorship resistance to begin with.

There are a few good decentralized applications, though.

Even these would be better on traditional database, but due to high risk of censorship (from governments), they are impossible for centralized companies.

Voting

Transparent vote tallying is one application of a blockchain.

It’s cheap to send a transaction on most blockchains, and small bits of information (e.g. a candidate’s name) can be included for less than a cent.

Votes could be tallied manually with references to immutable data.

Because of scale, this is much more practical on a local level, but could be done on a state or national level on a blockchain with high transaction throughput.
 

Prediction markets

Prediction markets are another application for which blockchains are well-suited.

Prediction markets allow users to create customized bets on future events, then trade those positions with others.

The price of a position in a prediction market reflects the market’s assessment of the event’s probability.

This would enable risk-averse companies to hedge their bets on future events, signal an issue’s importance (looking at volume), and could even guide public policy.

Censor-proof social media (hybrid)

Most of social media is clutter. Selfies and cat videos and don’t need censorship resistance.

But as Facebook, Google, and Twitter have shown, certain political positions are unwelcome in public discourse.

Users, most often libertarians and conservatives have been banned from these platforms on the grounds of “hate speech” for promoting rational positions.

Conservative social media sites like Gab have popped up to make a home for some of these, but even Gab has been censored, cut off from payment processors.

Furthermore, Gab is a company, and could easily censor a liberal faction of its user base, for example.

To prevent this, social media companies could employ a hybrid database architecture – optional archival of posts on-chain.

This could be very useful for posts which are controversial or political in nature.
 

Archiving data

Cryptocurrency transactions are just strings of letters and numbers, so any kind of data can be posted to a blockchain.

If it’s worth it to the user who posts them, pictures, videos, and even large files can be hosted on a blockchain.

For example, Wikileaks is archived on the Bitcoin Cash chain.

Successful dApps

It’s been three years since high-profile dApps which fueled the ICO craze of 2017 debuted.

Of those, only one which requires a blockchain actually came to fruition – Augur, a prediction market app built on Ethereum. Other attempts at prediction markets are imminent on the Bitcoin Cash chain.

Prediction markets are extremely underestimated by the public and could drastically impact future events.

For more reading, check out the Wikipedia page on the subject.

Conclusion

Blockchain is still a somewhat nascent technology. It would be foolish to rule out future applications entirely, but so far, these are the only decentralized applications beyond money and other property which make sense.

And there’s a common thread with all of these. Some of them are subversive, but all of them require decentralization due to threat of government force.

Absent this coercion, even prediction markets and social media would be safe from censorship – competition would force bad actors out of business.

By enabling the first truly free markets, cryptocurrencies allow these beneficial technologies to help humanity reach its next steps toward freedom.