What if there is a technological advancement so powerful
that it transforms the very basic pillars of our society?
A technology which fundamentally influences the way that our economy, governance systems
and businesses function,and change our conceptual understanding of trade, ownership and trust?
This technology already exists, and it’s called crypto currency. People often think
of crypto currency as only virtual money or a transaction system. But if you look closer,
you’ll see that the monetary aspect, is just the tip of the iceberg.That’s because
Bitcoin is a ground-breaking internet technology for which money is merely one of the possible
applications. crypto currency enables a network of computers to maintain a collective bookkeeping
via the internet. This bookkeeping is neither closed nor in control of one party, rather,
it is public and available in one digital ledger which is fully distributed across the
network. We call this the Blockchain. In the Blockchain, all transactions are logged including
information on the time, date, participants and amount of every single transaction. Each
node in the network owns a full copy of the Blockchain. On the basis of complicated state-of-the-art
mathematical principles, the transactions are verified by the so-called crypto currency
Miners, who maintain the ledger. The mathematical principles also ensure that these nodes automatically
and continuously agree about the current state of the ledger and every transaction in it.
If anyone attempts to corrupt a transaction, the nodes will not arrive at a consensus and
hence will refuse to incorporate the transaction in the Blockchain. So every transaction is
public and thousands of nodes unanimously agree that a transaction has occurred on date
X at time Y. It’s like there’s a notary present at each transaction. This way, everyone
has access to a shared single source of truth. This is why we can always trust the Blockchain.
And each crypto currency is both individually identifiable and programmable.This means that
users can assign properties to each unit. Users can program a unit to represent a eurocent,
or a share in a company, a kilowatt-hour of energy or a digital certificate of ownership.
Automizing such matters leads to a considerable decrease in bureaucracy, which saves accountants,
controllers, and the organization in general an incredible amount of time but there is
more. In an 'internet of things', our economy will be dealing with machines that actively
participate in the economic traffic.In fact, they are already here. Think of a vending
machine. or drones delivering packages. These machines are unfamiliar with the concept of
trust, Because of the blockchain, the drone can be a hundred percent certain that it will
deliver the package to the right recipient and know for sure that it has been paid for.And
we can program the vending machine in such a way that it will automatically keep track
of its supplies, order new supplies from the supplier and pay for them automatically. Of
course, you will understand that this is only the beginning. Internet technology is disruptive
and breaks the status quo.It opens markets and breaks the positions of middlemen all
the time. Blockchain and crypto currencies have caused a paradigm shift. It’s time
to explore this new technology constructively and critically, and openly discuss the potential
applications.