Vitalik Buterin: Non-Financial Blockchain Use Cases Are A “Harder Pitch”

The co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), Vitalik Buterin, is in our cryptocurrency news section again. This time, we are featuring his statement at the crypto event Token 2049 (held in Hong Kong) – where he said that blockchain applications outside of finance face more difficulty in gaining traction – mostly because of the primary added value that they offer – being decentralization.

His comments began with the note where he described finance as “realistically the first blockchain [application] that will probably achieve wide scale adoption,”adding that he is a huge fan of self-declared huge fan of other applications.

As he said:

“The problem is that decentralization is basically their value add. With finance you’re competing with banks that take five days to do something interesting. With anything that’s not financial, chances are there is some internet thing that does what you want, that’s just centralized. So it’s a bit of a harder pitch.”

When it came to the actual examples of areas that blockchain could be implemented into beyond finance, Vitalik isolated digital identity, reputation and digital certificates as the specific use cases that are not necessarily confined to the use of cryptocurrencies or financial markets.

In his further discussion, Buterin also motivated the event attendees to identify real-world applications that focus on developing “not just theory but something on the ground.” Some of the examples included micro-insurance, non-fungible tokens as well as gaming.

Speaking of, Buterin said a lot about gaming. He thinks that while many people are committed to blockchain innovation that could tackle real-world problems in many industries and provide positive social impact – the use of blockchain in the entertainment and gaming industries is where it could excel as well, attracting high numbers of early adopters.

On the topic of personal commitments, Buterin highlighted the decentralized applications (dApps) which allow multipel actors to share and cooperate on applications that are based on underlying and decentralized blockchain protocol.

He also proposed that the dApps use case can potentially redraw the existing technology and power landscape by leveraging a unique decentralized ecosystem that would allow smaller players to compete with tech giants’ monopolies.

In another interview, Buterin stated that he was trying to solve Bitcoin’s (BTC) limited functionality with the creation of Ethereum.