Sharing Economy 2.0: Technology is Removing the Need for Single Asset Ownership

#News(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

The definition of the sharing economy varies usually depends on who you ask — or what site you search. You will find that the definition often includes the sharing of a good or service through an online platform. The truth is, the sharing economy has existed for centuries. Communities historically shared limited resources instead of owning one of everything themselves.
The advent of the Internet changed the possibilities of a sharing economy for all of us, nowadays. This is a sharing economy and a gig-economy merger.

The Internet expanded the reach of connecting potential buyers to lenders — and everything else. It gave rise to tech giants like Airbnb and Uber that allowed everyday individuals to monetize their unused rooms, houses or cars. The Internet provided people with more choices — affordable and accessible ways to get from A to B, and stay in C. Our traditional counterparts didn’t have this opportunity.
The combined capabilities of IoT and Blockchain
Smart contracts are another element of blockchain that removes the need for trust between parties providing and using goods or services.

Slock.it is a German-based company that is building real-world applications for the sharing economy, by connecting human-machine and machine-machine sharing using blockchains and IoT and BoLT. Among their many endeavors, they are developing smart switches which can be used with smart contracts to autonomously unlock doors. These are the doors to a rental home, office space, vehicle, or even allowing access to services. Services may include such items as metered wifi upon receiving payment and giving access for the period paid.

Micropayments are essential to the inclusion of any type of asset or service into the sharing economy.
It has not always been easy to implement payments on small scale items where transactions costs represent a much higher percentage of the asset you’re paying for. The introduction of bitcoin as the first application of blockchain showed a new possibility for micro payments. Previously these had been hindered by transaction fees incurred by traditional credit card companies.
Cryptocurrencies were seen as the new solution that could allow you to pay per article on a media site. Now they are much more.

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