When you use a public blockchain for your business, you will enable the ecosystem players to see your transactions. Yes, your competitors would be able to see everyone else’s information, such as which partners or customers a user transacts with; however, because of the user anonymity, they wouldn’t be able to easily assess the identity behind the username. However, assuming that the relative anonymity is not enough for a business with heavy trade secrets, there are many other options for businesses wishing to use blockchain and keep their information private. One is using a permission blockchain, such as Hyperledger, which only enables permission members within the ecosystem to review your transactions. Other blockchain solutions enable data encryption and creation of secret smart contracts that are not stored on the private blockchain.
The blockchain is a very new technology and the best feature about it is that almost everything is programmable. If the industry requires certain features, such as data privacy, in order to adopt and use blockchain, such features will be developed. That’s the beauty of it.