The Economy of Things is perhaps the more appropriate way to describe what is rapidly transpiring and what the Internet of Things must and will become.
The common language of our connected things is not a communication protocol. We are quickly realizing it is in fact going to be a global cryptocurrency.
The common layer amongst all connected devices will be transactional in nature powered by a secure, decentralized, machine to machine economy. This is Internet 2.0, IoT 2.0 and Bitcoin 2.0 all rolled into one.
If crypto is not on your IoT product roadmap, you need to find a way to get it on there.
So what does this really mean for IoT devices?
- They will have access to wallets tied to their globally unique IDs.
- They will spend from their wallets as they transmit and hence transact.
- Every transmission attempt will be recorded, whether it got to the network or not.
- IoT devices need to support cryptographic primitives - preferably in hardware.
- Security is now the central focus of the device's firmware design.
- Device provisioning procedures - at the factory and by the user - will need to be carefully crafted.