I’m guessing that you have probably heard of Bitcoin. From the online world to even offline, Bitcoin has made its way into the pockets of buyers and sellers from countries in every corner of the world, and its fame has extended to even little kids asking their parents about the strange term they keep hearing about! This increasingly digitized world that we live in today has allowed buyers and sellers to be able to conduct business online with not only cash but cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, which took the world by storm with its release in 2009. The surge in demand for individuals and businesses to use technology over the past couple of decades has given rise to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and blockchains, both of which have completely revamped the way people conduct business. Yet despite its popularity and broad applications, Bitcoin has proven to be an unstable alternative, causing skepticism amongst many. Many traditional banks have shied away from such publicly-used cryptocurrencies. You may ask, “Why? If the online business world has adapted to using Bitcoin, why not the banks?”. The reason is that it is simply too big of a risk involved with Bitcoin. Because of its recent release in 2009, no comprehensive record or track of the cryptocurrency has been created and its instability has scared away banks. Although witnessing the drawbacks of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, two “hackers” known as Amber Baldet and Patrick Mylund Nielsen, who works for JPMorgan Chase, took on a challenge that no one, not even the CEO of the company himself, saw coming. With their vision of the potential for banks to use cryptocurrency, Baldet and Nielsen headed a project that would take traditional banks a step closer towards integrating a different kind of technology in business, one that many never believed could have succeeded before. Baldet worked at Capco before moving to JPMorgan Chase where she became the leader of her team’s project for creating the new blockchain, Quorum. She was later joined by Nielsen, who previously worked at Kaspersky Lab and eventually became the lead developer on the project. These two found the necessities for creating the blockchain project from Ethereum, known as the next cryptocurrency network following Bitcoin in terms of market value. As a result of the updated version of Ethereum, Quorum was finally created to revamp the way businesses execute their transactions. JPMorgan Chase unveiled Quorum in 2017, shocking the crypto community and banking world when it broke from the “status quo”. This blockchain proved its uniqueness from enabling users to carry out transactions with security and privacy. Why did Chase decide to take this leap of faith? This wasn’t always the idea at hand. Initially, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase, scoffed at the concept. In November of 2015, Dimon released statements claiming that “Bitcoin is a fraud… If you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it one day”. He also claimed he would fire any employees found trading cryptocurrency. Who could have known this would all change merely a couple of years later! The new blockchain of Quorum involves the “zero-knowledge security layer”, a privacy setting allowing banks and private users to execute transactions without the public having access to these “movements”. Not only does Quorum provide additional security, but it also has the potential to reduce the amount of time it takes for transactions to process and reduces delay times. This, in turn, reduces the payments of the treasury services for the business’s bank from $6 trillion to a number much more relieving than this one! This recent creation of Quorum is a great step forward but is one of the long lists of technological integrations that JPMorgan Chase has made to become America’s biggest, and most successful bank. CEO Jamie Dimon revealed that “One of the reasons we’re performing well as a company is because we never stopped investing in technology – this should never change”. Chase has invested billions of dollars in technology, which, according to Dimon, has been one of the greatest contributing factors to the success of the bank. The increased efficiency, accuracy, better and lower cost customer service that Chase offers can all be attributed to improvements made in how Chase uses technology and artificial intelligence. With their increased usage and integration of technology in their systems, Chase has been able to beat out many of its competitors, which is precisely why non-technology businesses need to embrace technology to compete in the market today. With the number of smartphone and app users growing rapidly, businesses will have to keep up with the demand for easier and more efficient methods of customer service and consumer needs. For example, thousands of popular restaurants such as The Cheesecake Factory, Five Guys, Pizza My Heart, Panda Express, and many more now use DoorDash, a food delivery service created in 2013, to deliver their food to thousands of customers without having to expend their own resources on creating their own delivery service. By integrating technology into their systems, these businesses extended their popularity and value while simultaneously making life easier for their hungry customers. It is clear to see that once businesses embrace new, efficient technology, they are much more likely to become more successful. The modern technological world demands that such businesses keep up with the fast-moving times, and the sooner the non-technology businesses embrace tech, the stronger they will be. If you are a traditional business looking for technology help in marketing, give a call to Sakshi at 408.621.8481. We are more than happy to help!