Blockchain Beyond Bitcoin: Hits and Misses

A few years ago, blockchain was pitched as the answer to almost everything: supply chains, voting, health records, real estate, music royalties. Many of those projects quietly disappeared. Others found real, if narrower, uses. The difference usually comes down to one question: does the problem actually need a shared record that several parties who don't fully trust each other can all rely on, without a central operator? Looking at projects that worked, and some that didn't, makes the answer clearer.

What a blockchain actually is

A blockchain is a shared database, or ledger, copied across many computers. New records are grouped into blocks, and each block is linked to the previous one using cryptography, which makes past records very hard to change without others noticing. Public blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, let anyone participate. Private or permissioned blockchains restrict participation to approved organizations. The main benefits are a tamper-evident history and the ability for multiple parties to share data without one controlling it. The main costs are complexity, slower performance than ordinary databases, and, for some public blockchains, energy use.

Where it has found real uses

Payments and stablecoins. Stablecoins are digital tokens designed to hold a steady value, usually pegged to the US dollar and backed by reserves. They are widely used to move money between cryptocurrency exchanges and, increasingly, for cross-border transfers in some countries where banking is slow or expensive. In 2025, the United States passed the GENIUS Act, its first federal law setting rules for payment stablecoins, including reserve requirements.

Tokenized financial assets. Some large financial firms have begun issuing traditional assets, such as money market funds and government bonds, as tokens on blockchains, which can allow faster settlement and round-the-clock transfers. BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL, launched in 2024, is one prominent example. The market is still small compared with conventional finance.

Food traceability. In a widely reported pilot around 2017, Walmart and IBM showed that tracing the origin of a package of sliced mangoes, which had taken nearly seven days using paper records, could be done in about two seconds with a blockchain-based system. Walmart later required some leafy green suppliers to use the system after E. coli outbreaks, aiming to speed recalls.

Digital certificates. Some universities and training providers issue diplomas and credentials that can be verified on a blockchain, reducing credential fraud and the need to contact the issuing institution.

Where it struggled

Global shipping. TradeLens, a blockchain platform for shipping documents developed by shipping giant Maersk and IBM, was announced in 2018 to digitize paperwork across the supply chain. It was shut down in 2023 after failing to reach full commercial viability, largely because it did not attract enough of the industry's competitors to participate.

Voting. Experiments with blockchain voting have been criticized by security researchers. A 2020 analysis by MIT researchers of the Voatz app, used in some US pilot elections, identified security vulnerabilities. Most election security experts argue that internet voting, blockchain or not, introduces risks that paper ballots avoid.

Health records. Many proposals to store or share medical records on blockchains ran into problems with privacy laws, the difficulty of deleting data and the reluctance of health systems to change existing records systems.

NFTs. Non-fungible tokens, which record ownership of digital items such as artwork, boomed in 2021 and then collapsed in trading volume and prices. Some artists and brands still use them, but the speculative mania faded.

A simple test

Technology analysts often suggest asking these questions before using blockchain:

• Do several organizations need to share and update the same records?
• Do they lack a trusted central party that everyone would accept to run an ordinary database?
• Is a permanent, tamper-evident history important?
• Are participants willing to adopt a shared system, including competitors?

If the answer to most of these is no, a conventional database is usually faster, cheaper and simpler. A blockchain also only guarantees that records haven't been changed after entry. It cannot guarantee that the information entered was true in the first place, a limitation sometimes called the "garbage in, garbage out" problem.

Risks for individuals

For consumers, the most common encounter with blockchain is cryptocurrency, which carries real risks: price volatility, scams, hacks of exchanges and wallets, and the permanent loss of funds if passwords or recovery phrases are lost. Investment scams involving cryptocurrency have been among the costliest types of fraud reported to the FBI in recent years. Be skeptical of anyone promising guaranteed returns or asking you to send cryptocurrency.

The likely future

Blockchain is unlikely to transform every industry, as early promoters predicted. Its most durable uses appear to be in finance, where tokenization and stablecoins are attracting regulation and investment, and in specific cases where multiple organizations need a shared, auditable record. For most other problems, the less glamorous answer is a well-run database.