Blockchain Revolution: Beyond Bitcoin and into the Future

After the 2008 financial crisis, a mysterious paper was released by Satoshi Nakamoto that discussed a new peer to peer financial system using a digital cryptocurrency called Bitcoin. The economy was in a global recession at the time and people were frustrated with centralized banks disrupting and controlling the financial system. The technology invented to power this new system was called blockchain. Bitcoin enabled online payments to be transferred directly between two people without a third-party middle-man. While the idea behind Bitcoin was incredibly innovative and has since grown rapidly in monetary value and has received mainstream news coverage in recent years, the main innovation was not the digital currency itself but rather the technology that it uses, blockchain.

Even though blockchain is typically associated with bitcoin, blockchain's uses go far beyond digital currencies. The main concept behind blockchain is rather simple, think of it as a "continuously updated record of who holds what". These records are stored in blocks and are made secure using a system of connected transactions. The applications of blockchain technology as a whole will be incredibly revolutionary and has the potential to be the biggest innovation since the invention of the internet (give source). Thousands of companies and corporations are researching blockchain including the government who are actively working with developers to invent new ways of utilizing blockchain technology. It is difficult to predict exactly how blockchain technology will be used in the future, but it is clear that the technology is being pursued by many industries and the potential is clear.

Any industry that needs to store records and transactions will be able to make use of blockchain technology.

Distributed system, used to exchange anything of value, and can't be tampered.

These records of value are stored in digital blocks, and each block that comes after it is related to the previous block. Blockchain is run on a peer to peer network with millions of computers where a continuously updated record keeps track of who owns everything. The entire blockchain runs on a network of computers instead of only running on one central system. The benefit of this is that if anyone were to mess with the data, everyone would know about it and would be able to see it.

Consider blockchain as a platform that can be added to different applications

In 2008 a group known as Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin. The technology behind Bitcoin uses a public distributed ledger or blockchain to verify transactions between users. The current market cap for Bitcoin is $147.8 billion as of March 2018. So just how did this strange digital currency grow so much, the answer is blockchain technology. Blockchain technology can be thought of as the public database that records all of the transactions made with bitcoin. A critical component to blockchain is transactions can be completed without any central authority and is instead verified by a vast network of computer nodes that communicate with one another running bitcoin software. Each network stores its own copy of the blockchain and can verify the amount of bitcoin that has been spent from the transaction.

One problem with bitcoin was the size of blockchain was limited. The block size was limited to one megabyte in 2010 to counter spam which was increased to a maximum of four megabytes in August 2017 with SegWit(explain). The limit placed upon as is not the result of the limitations of blockchain, but rather preventions put in place for the bitcoin market. Blockchain size limit could be better utilized to handle larger file sizes for other applications purposes.

Blockchain

Blockchain has been called the next stage of the internet by many.

Blockchain technology is the next generation of the internet.

The first way that blockchain technology is used is through transactions for cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are all the rage right now with Bitcoin climbing to an all time high of $20,000 in December 2017. Despite this, cryptocurrencies are still nowhere near

Blockchain will be used in a variety of means in the future

It is difficult to share digital assets for the fear of what are essentially just files could be copied. This is known as the double spending problem, which blockchain solves.

Every blockchain application is open source. The technology is designed to be easily accessible in order to keep records in trust.

The impact blockchain could have on all of our lives. Blockchain is a continuously updated record of who holds what. New legislation could be created in the future. Using smart contracts, you can orders carried out in real-time, buy the item with a cryptocurrency that is linked to your bank account and the details are completed in the smart contracts. This would all happen in minutes over days, the global blockchain was updated so now everyone knows that you own this item. The use of these smart contracts can be combined together to form a completely automatic company. The importance and potential of technology of blockchain using smart contracts.

Companies will become more automated,

There are still some difficulties with blockchain, coding errors or malicious software used in smart contracts could cause massive problems for smart contracts. The blockchain is also permanent so this could cause some problems. "When discussing blockchain, we are at this stage in the blockchain ecosystem probably the equivalent of 1993 when the internet was opened by president Clinton, before 1992, the internet was only open up private researchers and scientist. Who could ever have imagined in 1992 that we would ever have companies like Google or Amazon, who have asked how we use this blockchain technology to do this thing in the future to do this. There will be some people in the future who look at this technology." (Add source man from ColdFusion video) Blockchain is the next step of the internet, a complete overhaul of how things are recorded, organized, and run.

BODY:

The first way blockchain will be used in the future is for protecting digital identities. Using blockchain technology is useful in keeping personal identification safe and secure. Our daily lives are requiring more time spent on managing and verifying accounts to sign into.

The second way blockchain technology will be used in the future is for Smart contracts. Smart Contracts are one essential application for any blockchain system. Blockchain will allow for smart contracts, which would replace the paperwork between two people. No lawyers, long business decisions or middlemen would be required to complete the contract. (Give example between two people for a hypothetical scenario for a long contract). The smart contract is automatic and the code is set to the rules agreed by the two people. These smart contracts will allow for companies to become much more automated.

Healthcare, according to IDC Health Insights (source) 20% of health organizations will be using blockchain for their businesses by 2020.

Startup GEM for healthcare.

Can track the progress of patients after they leave the hospital and also updated private records for the patients. MIT MEDREC(blockchain source) MedRec, medical data management using blockchain.

Where is blockchain being used today? According to Lary Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, The blockchain opens up the possibility of having a truly credible network of encyclopedias and information that is open source( Larry Sanger). Everpedia uses blockchain and would collect all the links and articles and then make them ratable. For example, you could go to a page about dogs and you find a bunch of articles. The best article for dogs would be at the very top based on the rating other users gave to the article who cited it as credible and reliable. This categorization can go even further, as you could sort which group of users consider the best article about dogs. Consider a more controversial topic such as ISIS, you would be able to sort what the top-rated articles are for users in America, or what about users from Saudi Arabia. You would be able to compare different points of view which not only would be interesting to see how different users rate articles, it would also give us a better perspective on complicated issues and allow us to discover new information. Wikipedia only gives you one article about the topic because there is only one community that maintains the article. Through blockchain, websites like Everpedia would prevent people from living in a bubble of fake news and biased media. This is no doubt quite an ambitious project

Applications of Blockchain:

Shipping:

Companies and organizations are adopting IBM's blockchain technology in droves as a way to track shipments and store data across the supply chain (IBM Source).

IBM alone is working on 400 different blockchain projects.

Walmart:

Walmart To Implement Blockchain-Based Delivery System

Digital Voting and the Government.

The applications of blockchain will also be implemented by governments.

" Dubai wants to become first city built upon blockchain technology". The blockchain is estimated (source) to give a savings of $1.5 billion per year. Most of this reduction comes from blockchain reducing the need for paper contracts

The Estonian government Financial Services and banking.

Barclays bank, blockchain for reducing bank fraud. Barclay's quote "Our belief is that blockchain is a fundamental part of the new operating system for the planet".

Smart Energy:

Transactiv grid, smart energy from Brooklyn. This startup allows members to locally produce solar

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