I like Science fiction and why not Business Science fiction :-)!!!
Let’s write a story how it could be: Airbnb change his business model toward Blockchain business model .
Let’s start from a point of view of the usual digital business model of AirBnb , the home sharing business platform where Airbnb are intermediating a service between Home takers and Home Givers.
In the case of Airbnb , this business model is a definitive sharing economy business model which was directly copied from many competitors (Holiday Lettings, Home away, Housetrip aso.) after Airbnb launched. Following description , if SCI-FI, could be applied also for all the today existing digital business platforms that intermediates.
Let’s hypothetically assume that Airbnb want to grow his profits and decide they want to save, let’s say 5 % cost they have for their banking transaction fees to transfer the money between Home takers and Home Givers , bypassing their own banks, using the Blockchain technology which is totally secure and trustworthy.
This means if Airbnb would make in 2017 2,8 Billion US Dollar Revenue their motivation to move to blockchain technology and to full automatized the business model leaving their banks outside would be 280 million US$ x year . If they would do in 2020 8,5 billion US$ revenues is even more ,around 850 million US dollar savings (5 % costs is only an assumption).
Just for this example, without knowing anything about Blockchain technology, we can see the benefit of a company can take from the use of services done on this technology base only disintermediating their actual business model.
First disrupting point : Taking over value chain of their own banks
Blockchain technology make very much sense when there is a functioning digital business model and you want to full automatised it with this technology .
To fully automatize their system , let’s hypothetically assume Airbnb do not have enough cash.
There is also the problem to finance to whole digital transformation from actual digital business model to the blockchain one and they do not want to do a traditional IPO (Initial Public Offer in the Stock Exchange).
They also hypothetically decide to write a White Paper , taking experts, to describe the new business model , the benefit for the company and the benefits for all the investors.
Inside the White Paper they describe also which digital currency they will use.
Let’s hypothetically assume they decide to create their own cryptocurrency (Airbnb Coin ?! ) defining in the Whitepaper how much currency supply there will be , which part will stay in the company and which part will be offered to the public.
They describe , then, in the Whitepaper they want to do an ICO ( Initial Coin Offer) and they fix the date (I symplified here very much) and place in the internet the ICO with all details asking for a target Crowdfunding, let’s say 250 million US $.
So now if the target was to crowdfunding 250 million US dollar we can imagine how much people would want to invest in this hypothetical ICO of Airbnb because it is an existing platform and an existing business with proven success. No risk ! Only earnings sharing.
Let's’ ask now : what would be disintermediate in this ICO of the usual standard stakeholders by an IPO?
Second Disrupting point: The value chain of all the specialists there are needed to prepare an IPO (Initial Public Offer), the IPO itself and the launch on the Stock Exchange .
It seems , by some ICO’s, the cost are around 1% of the crowdfunding value.
Without knowing anything about the technology behind we understand that also an existing digital business can be transformed within the Blockchain bringing funding. outside the usual channels and fees , disrupting the banking system and the actual stock exchange structure creating an alternative system to the actual central one.
Banks and stock exchanges will anyway stay in the business creating own Blockchain concepts that enable them to stay further in the business (see Citibank and Nasdaq) :-( .
Now why there is so much attention to actual ICO’s?
Due the fact that many new player are coming in, with completely new business model, which are adjacent and not possible before using the Blockchain technology , very different from older one , disrupting existing business, there is a global attention from the different controlling stakeholders like Central Banks that these ICO’s are not used to describe business cases that are fraudulent (Ponzi schemes and what else).Let’s say for investors protection.
The second issue is the Business of ICO’s is too big to leave it to private persons.For the period as per last year July to July 2017 the multiplicand of the raised Crowdfunding by ICO’s is 10 !!! Let's’ say if last year was 240 US $.million today is 2.200 million or 2 , 2 billion US $ in only 7 month time.
This is not longer a secondary market , this disrupt the actual banking systems giving the world another banking system which is no longer a central one taking them, of the long run, their actual power.
That’s why the FED, the ECB,other central banks and financial stakeholders,have an high attention on ICO’s. That's why China Central Bank stopped all ICO’s and the money was given back to investors.
Above SCI-FI explanation is surely not exhaustive about the applications of the Blockchain technology , but very much simplified. There is much more coming related to the new businesses planned for the future, and we all expect to be done ,like new business services introduced in cars , homes , airplanes , drones aso. where this Blockchain technology will be mandatory because mostly cyber secure.
The last you surely know is that Dov Coin https://dovu.io/ is the 1st world cryptocurrency for mobility ...this not more SCI-FI??!…..or ??
Let’s write more about Blockchain Business SCI-FI…... :-)
Cheers Stemmians..Like to be in!!! :-)