What is Blockchain?
The technology that made Bitcoin possible is a game-changing breakthrough with consequences for almost everything.
fundamentals-blockchain
Blockchain technology.
Gartner, the world-renowned research organization , estimates that it will create $3.1 trillion in new business value by 2030.
Goldman Sachs calls it the “new technology of trust.”
Why is blockchain being talked so much? And what about it is so new and different?
Here is a primer on one of the most promising technologies of our time – and the basis of the crypto asset revolution.
The history of blockchain technology
How did it all begin?
Most people trace the beginnings of blockchain back to Bitcoin and the Bitcoin Whitepaper of 2008. But many elements of blockchain technology actually precede Satoshi Nakamoto’s outline for a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
Pre-pioneers
Blockchain is a combination of many technological breakthroughs that date back several decades. Bitcoin was the first real application of a blockchain technology in the form of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
In 1991, two scientists named Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta brought out a solution for the time-stamping of digital documents. The idea was to make it impossible to tamper with or back-date them and to “chain them together” into an on-going record. Haber and Stornetta’s proposal was later enhanced with the introduction of Merkle trees.
But time-stamping alone didn’t lead to the birth of blockchain. This first element eventually fell by the wayside and the patent for Haber and Stornetta’s invention ran out.
A second major, missing element was a way to secure the network. Today’s Bitcoin network uses what is called Proof-of-Work to do this. The first iteration of this was something called Reusable Proof-of-Work and it was introduced by Hal Finney. Its goal was to prevent digital tokens or “money” from being spent twice, what is classically known as the “double-spend problem.”
Although Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin was eventually the innovation that would bring blockchain to the masses, these early pioneers weren’t forgotten. The first Bitcoin transaction (on 12 January 2009) was a transfer of 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto to Hal Finney.
Why is blockchain unique?
So why all the fuss about blockchain? Is it really that important?
For one thing, the technology has allowed for the creation of peer-to-peer electronic money that replaces intermediaries with a trust layer not controlled by any one entity. This means that to send money to a friend, you no longer need a bank that keeps a record of your account balance and verifies the transaction anymore, you can send it directly – peer-to-peer.
In other words, it empowers individuals in a way that technology has never done before.
But beyond purely financial applications, blockchain has the potential to drastically alter the way business is done across many different industry verticals.
A quick example
For a quick comparison, consider Google Docs.
When several people need to collaborate on a text (or in the case of Google Sheets, a spreadsheet) they can easily enter changes and make comments which are immediately updated in real time so that all participants in the discussion or “network” are up-to-date.
Think for a moment about how this has changed the way people do work.
On one level it speeds up the collaborative process and saves co-workers the time and hassle of sending Word files back and forth. On another level, it removes the confusion and risk of having miss-named versions end up with decision makers who don’t have complete information.
Now, Google Docs can represent a kind of ledger or record of changes that is both (somewhat) distributed and always carrying a clear version of “the truth.” In reality, of course, there is a centralized server on Google’s side that stores all the data and tracks all updates.
Blockchain introduces a similar concept for real-time work – and goes even further.
It adds the features of a cryptographically-secured identity (via public-private key pairs) and immutability through linked groups (blocks) of transactions which are secured by a powerful computing network and time-stamped to create a trusted record of interactions.
The ledger and beyond
In the case of Bitcoin, the blockchain was created to secure an immutable ledger of “monetary” transactions. For transactions involving large amounts of value, this immutability is paramount.
But many different business processes involve transactions of things besides money (as we know it today). This could be small bits of information, documents, access rights, contracts, records of goods shipped and so on and so forth.
Right now, of course, many of these processes are still very much manual and even paper-based. But even if they are digitized, they run through centralized systems that can be inefficient, prone to failure or hacks and ultimately controlled by a single entity which gains economic benefit from this control.
Blockchain changes all of that. Now a distributed network allows more democratic participation, provides a system for interactions with secure and verified identity of network participants and makes it possible to create digital representations of physical objects (tokenization) for better processes.
With the implementation of Ethereum smart contracts, in which external data feeds (oracles) can trigger code execution, more complex operations are possible, enabling completely new business models.
All of this opens the door to a vast myriad of applications with game-changing potential.
How blockchain can change the world
Some people might say that Bitcoin was enough of a revolution in and of itself.
But as we explore blockchain’s potential, we see even broader horizons.
As mentioned already, each new implementation of blockchain brings new possibilities. With Ethereum, smart-contract based applications are being explored already. Weather data can trigger automatic insurance payouts for goods which have been delayed by a storm. Individuals can participate in mutual schemes to insure household goods based on price feeds and verified damage reports.
Some innovations based on blockchain may be small and seemingly incremental. With big banks like Santander, this is, perhaps, understandable. The Spanish bank recently used Ethereum to settle a $20 million bond trade.
Other steps forward promise (or threaten, depending on your viewpoint) to change the paradigm completely. Decentralized finance applications are already gaining traction, allowing for lending and credit, derivatives trading and collective insurance and more.
These new and exciting business models leverage not only the distributed network, immutability and security of blockchain technology, but also the built-in incentive systems linked to public blockchains.
What does this mean? Take once again the example of Google Docs.
What if – instead of simply collaborating to add and change text in a document – participants in a team were rewarded for each spelling error they corrected with a micro-reward?
And then, the contributor with the most additions received a larger reward, but then shared part of that reward with colleagues who checked his citations. And finally, the entire team earned a common “interest” reward on an amount they had previously committed to a kind of escrow, incentivizing them to complete the work by a fixed deadline and with a pre-determined level of accuracy.
This example may seem complex – but it illustrates what range of new possibilities there are for completely different models of work and business.
bitcoin knots bitcoin poloniex
monero coin
video bitcoin bitcoin cny форк bitcoin panda bitcoin bitcoin удвоить bitcoin аккаунт bitcoin service
платформ ethereum куплю ethereum monero minergate bitcoin wm bitcoin safe
bitcoin окупаемость пулы ethereum bitcoin facebook accelerator bitcoin escrow bitcoin monero вывод bitcoin лучшие bitcoin instagram
claymore monero bitcoin de
фото bitcoin
box bitcoin bitcoin hyip видео bitcoin
byzantium ethereum
bitcoin форекс dance bitcoin tether chvrches bitcoin favicon habrahabr bitcoin надежность bitcoin kurs bitcoin
bio bitcoin bitcoin darkcoin валюты bitcoin bitcoin matrix demo bitcoin валюты bitcoin monero fr bitcoin trend fpga ethereum foto bitcoin bitcoin casascius value bitcoin cryptocurrency dash autobot bitcoin
bitcoin видеокарты взлом bitcoin calculator ethereum казино ethereum swarm ethereum
bitcoin talk
сайт ethereum monero minergate blitz bitcoin bitcoin сборщик bitcoin download According to some sources, bitcoin is increasingly being used for money laundering. But blockchain analytics startups and crypto tracing firms are rolling out new tools to help exchanges comply with anti-money laundering standards. And anyway, bitcoin is not, as is commonly believed, a good vehicle for money laundering, extorsion or terrorism financing, since it is both traceable and transparent – as a spate of recent arrests can attest.How Cryptocoin Mining Worksbitcoin com What Happened Next?This isn’t a one-time incident either. Whether its social media, banks, internet service providers or the U.S. election, centralized servers are hacked all the time. However, the good news is that decentralized servers are virtually impossible to hack. Here’s why!bitcoin покупка bitcoin аккаунт криптокошельки ethereum bitcoin установка bitcoin mt4 love bitcoin
покер bitcoin bitcoin mt4 wei ethereum abi ethereum ethereum news cryptocurrency forum bitcoin прогнозы bitcoin зарегистрироваться конференция bitcoin bitcoin currency bitcoin explorer king bitcoin
bitcoin вход status bitcoin bitcoin puzzle bitcoin skrill bitcoin bitrix ethereum coins шифрование bitcoin bitcoin json ethereum ann bitcoin scripting cryptocurrency reddit акции bitcoin Security and Hot WalletsThe issue of scalability has been a particular pain point. The number of transactions that can be processed depends on the size of blocks, and bitcoin software is currently only able to process approximately three transactions per second. While this wasn’t a concern when there was little demand for cryptocurrencies, many worry that slow transaction speeds will push investors towards competitive cryptocurrencies.bye bitcoin hacking bitcoin buy tether
the ethereum продажа bitcoin cronox bitcoin bitcoin рейтинг cryptocurrency dash ann bitcoin ethereum eth sha256 bitcoin
bitcoin life ethereum habrahabr bitcoin приват24
capitalization cryptocurrency компьютер bitcoin testnet bitcoin wallets cryptocurrency mikrotik bitcoin bitcoin лого bitcoin analysis bitcoin ммвб trade cryptocurrency up bitcoin bitcoin de bitcoin mine
ethereum testnet клиент bitcoin auto bitcoin cpuminer monero bitcoin fund криптовалюту monero ethereum заработать cryptocurrency calculator
робот bitcoin node bitcoin bitcoin шахта продать ethereum etf bitcoin ethereum форум rx470 monero bitcoin торги bitcoin information dorks bitcoin
While Keynesians worry that an appreciating currency will disincentivize consumption and investment in favor of savings and to the detriment of the economy at large, the free market actually works better in practice than it does when applying flawed Keynesian theory. In practice, a currency that is appreciating will be used everyday to facilitate consumption and investment because there is an incentive to save, not despite that fact. High present demand for both consumption and investment is dictated by positive time preference and there being an express incentive to save; everyone is always trying to earn everyone else’s money and everyone needs to consume real goods every day.robot bitcoin tether coinmarketcap ethereum клиент bitcoin favicon
скачать tether bitcoin fake бесплатно bitcoin вложить bitcoin
monero coin bye bitcoin bitcoin зарабатывать bitcoin protocol bitcoin wmx pos bitcoin bitcoin atm vip bitcoin 4000 bitcoin bitcoin trojan надежность bitcoin продажа bitcoin day bitcoin calculator cryptocurrency майн ethereum bitcoin mt4
сеть ethereum bitcoin heist Bitcoin mining converts the output from those cheap stranded sources of energy into something that currently has monetary value.carding bitcoin bitcoin like bitcoin token bcc bitcoin bitcoin node cryptocurrency charts bitcoin live How to Invest in Ethereum using Other Cryptocurrenciesethereum coin bitcoin wmx bitcoin блокчейн For more on smart contracts, see my What is a Smart Contract guide.Sometimes, you wonder about the origin of Bitcoin and the way in which it goes into circulation. Well, it simply came from being 'mined'. Mining bitcoins both works to release a new Bitcoin and also adds up transactions to the available block chain. The process of mining goes by solving a computationally challenging puzzle and collecting new transactions into blocks.bitcoin ios Bitcoin mining is so called because it resembles the mining of other commodities: it requires exertion and it slowly makes new units available to anybody who wishes to take part. An important difference is that the supply does not depend on the amount of mining. In general changing total miner hashpower does not change how many bitcoins are created over the long term.bitcoin lottery bitcoin p2p maps bitcoin bitcoin лохотрон bitcoin converter bitcoin simple
4000 bitcoin
ethereum addresses lite bitcoin bitcoin multisig калькулятор ethereum raspberry bitcoin bitcoin краны bitcoin p2p партнерка bitcoin bitcoin advcash buying bitcoin платформ ethereum nodes bitcoin
bitcoin kran python bitcoin bitcoin сети abi ethereum адреса bitcoin bitcoin microsoft armory bitcoin keystore ethereum падение ethereum bitcoin clouding finney ethereum bitcoin s loco bitcoin bitcoin qazanmaq ebay bitcoin bitcoin картинка bitcoin автоматически bitcoin mt4 check bitcoin стоимость ethereum кран monero money bitcoin bitcoin биткоин ethereum geth bitcoin click ethereum info vpn bitcoin capitalization cryptocurrency rpc bitcoin bitcoin мерчант keystore ethereum stock bitcoin daemon monero
сервер bitcoin bitcoin desk hack bitcoin bitcoin обозначение bitcoin widget bitcoin forums bitcoin status cryptocurrency news rus bitcoin decred ethereum bitcoin комбайн bitcoin скачать bitcoin программирование что bitcoin
p2p bitcoin bitcoin валюта bitcoin транзакции
bitcoin алгоритм blacktrail bitcoin cms bitcoin эфир bitcoin eth ethereum bitcoin сервера bitcoin футболка bitcoin sweeper платформы ethereum
заработка bitcoin 2x bitcoin bitcoin plus500 бутерин ethereum ethereum алгоритм bitcoin деньги s bitcoin tether download
bitcoin cryptocurrency cz bitcoin ethereum russia
bitcoin ocean bitcoin sign кликер bitcoin lootool bitcoin trade cryptocurrency bitcoin kran bounty bitcoin
bitcoin zona
создатель bitcoin bitcoin casino 100 bitcoin bitcoin minergate bitcoin take bitcoin lottery card bitcoin ethereum продать кошельки bitcoin Given:java bitcoin According to Ethereum, it can be used to 'codify, decentralize, secure, and trade just about anything.' One of the big projects around Ethereum is Microsoft’s partnership with ConsenSys which offers 'Ethereum Blockchain as a Service (EBaaS) on Microsoft Azure so Enterprise clients and developers can have a single click cloud-based blockchain developer environment.'bitcoin virus reddit bitcoin bitcoin бесплатные bitcoin hardware r bitcoin адреса bitcoin
bitcoin блог lazy bitcoin amazon bitcoin tether usd bitcoin steam
bitcoin выиграть заработать monero tether tools wordpress bitcoin bitcoin ann earning bitcoin компьютер bitcoin enterprise ethereum chvrches tether monero pools putin bitcoin game bitcoin china bitcoin dat bitcoin bitcoin исходники bitcoin hyip количество bitcoin monero coin is bitcoin
оплата bitcoin bitcoin сбор
bitcoin баланс accept bitcoin
обменники bitcoin gift bitcoin ethereum хардфорк alipay bitcoin tether wallet bitcoin коллектор bitcoin получить san bitcoin bitcoin шахта ethereum eth python bitcoin
робот bitcoin
bitcoin earnings monero transaction faucet cryptocurrency seed bitcoin
вывод monero 1 bitcoin metal bitcoin
сложность monero
by bitcoin gadget bitcoin bitcoin проект проекта ethereum раздача bitcoin команды bitcoin bitcoin multiplier bitcoin сигналы magic bitcoin tether android cryptocurrency logo вывести bitcoin биржи bitcoin monero usd bitcoin миллионеры пирамида bitcoin bitcoin обмен обменник ethereum best bitcoin ethereum miners
bitcoin вложения продажа bitcoin bitcoin demo ninjatrader bitcoin токены ethereum капитализация bitcoin token bitcoin ethereum конвертер topfan bitcoin bitcoin автоматически цена ethereum монета bitcoin p2p bitcoin индекс bitcoin bitcoin community майн ethereum bitcoin гарант scrypt bitcoin bitcoin hub
bitcoin аналитика
алгоритм monero konvert bitcoin Ethereum is different from Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency with the largest market capitalization as of 2020, in several aspects:bitcoin video vk bitcoin bitcoin count биткоин bitcoin платформа ethereum bitcoin download bitcoin основы bitcoin википедия wired tether
bitcoin футболка криптовалюту monero tinkoff bitcoin bitcoin сервисы bitcoin проверка client ethereum ethereum эфир код bitcoin bitcoin betting bitcoin ishlash ethereum пулы monero новости верификация tether ethereum пул boxbit bitcoin nicehash bitcoin ethereum coin
трейдинг bitcoin фарминг bitcoin bitcoin coingecko bitcoin valet alpha bitcoin bitcoin grant locals bitcoin
bitcoin casascius bitcoin аккаунт
bitcoin мошенники wallet cryptocurrency tether js hashrate ethereum разработчик bitcoin tcc bitcoin
eth ethereum получение bitcoin bitcoin конверт roll bitcoin bitcoin комбайн динамика ethereum ethereum сегодня epay bitcoin cryptocurrency ethereum
bitcoin 100 ethereum alliance
добыча bitcoin habrahabr bitcoin monero продать ethereum вики ethereum транзакции ethereum btc trezor ethereum bitcoin etherium production cryptocurrency bitcoin 50 transaction bitcoin bitcoin cz
exchange ethereum
bitcoin официальный bitcoin ann bitcoin курс pixel bitcoin decred cryptocurrency
blog bitcoin mikrotik bitcoin
buy ethereum monero новости раздача bitcoin bitcoin сделки
bitcoin робот etoro bitcoin краны bitcoin bitcoin hyip bitcoin investment card bitcoin bitcoin steam 777 bitcoin ethereum myetherwallet bitcoin asic bitcoin теханализ roboforex bitcoin адрес ethereum bitcoin qt bitcoin пицца monero node ethereum обменники прогнозы ethereum bitcoin attack monero transaction bitcoin переводчик bitcoin автомат