Digging Deeper - Blockchain: Beyond Bitcoin

You’d think the second-most populous country in the world could easily bag second place in just about any contest. But you know it isn’t that simple, going if only by our Olympic golds. And silvers and bronzes.

We do come in at a respectable second though in a couple of significant areas. One, at 3.5 million we have the world’s second largest developer community. The US has the largest with 5 million. Two, as a recent Moneycontrol article points out, we have the world’s second largest pool of blockchain developers - 19,627 of them in total on last count. That’s super specialisation for you. Specialisation in something super that is.

Because as a slew of year-end trend reports have started to point out, blockchain will continue to be one of the super tech trends for 2019.

Gartner, the research and analysis firm, says the technology will generate $ 3.1 trillion in business value by 2020. Blockchain is placed seventh in their list of 10, since we’re still feeling a little obsessed with ranks and positions. And, while at it, a bit pleased that it isn’t China in first place for a change. We’re a competitive people. Yes.

But to come back, if blockchain is the most searched term on gartner.com since 2017, which it is, and we have the 2nd largest pool of experts in the area, the technology certainly merits a closer look.

Welcome to Digging Deeper, a podcast series on Moneycontrol. Today we take a look at what having a larger blockchain developer pool means for India, what blockchain is in the first place and why Wired believes it could transform the art world. Okay, while that last bit is true, it’s really here to serve as clickbait. Or whatever the audio equivalent of that is.