Blockchains are used for payments, tokenization and tracking goods. Here are the most important uses in finance and business.
Traditional cross-border payments are often slow and expensive. With blockchains, value can move directly between parties, around the clock.
Stablecoins, tokens that track the value of for example the dollar or the euro, have become the most widely used form of money on blockchains. They are used both by individuals and by companies that want faster settlement.
Decentralized finance, often called DeFi, is financial services that run in smart contracts without a bank in the middle. It includes lending, trading and yield on deposits.
Protocols such as Aave and Uniswap have shown that such services can work at scale. At the same time there are risks, such as bugs in the code and a lack of consumer protection.
Tokenization means that ownership of an asset, such as a share, a bond or a fund, is recorded as tokens on a blockchain. That can bring faster settlement, lower costs and round-the-clock trading.
Large players such as BlackRock and several exchanges have started tokenizing funds and securities. Central banks are also testing digital central bank money and tokenized bank deposits.
Because a blockchain is hard to change, it is well suited to tracking goods from producer to customer. Food chains use the technology to find the source of contamination, and luxury brands use it to prove that goods are genuine.
What these uses have in common is that the blockchain replaces manual reconciliation between parties with one shared record. That cuts costs and makes it possible to build new services on existing infrastructure.