More than Just Bitcoin:  What You Should Know About Blockchain

Clearly, there’s a lot of buzz about blockchain and its best-known implementation, bitcoin.

Financial analysts have been watching in cautious amazement as bitcoin captures the attention of Wall Street.  Did you know that you can purchase your own bitcoin at an ATM in the Galleria Mall, at many gas stations and liquor stores, too?

But what is a blockchain?  According to the Harvard Business Review, a blockchain is “an open distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties in a verifiable and permanent way.”  A blockchain is maintained by a peer-to-peer network where all members of the network adhere to a common protocol for validating new transactions.  Like a chain link fence, new transactions form the basis of the links in the blockchain.  (For a more technical primer on Blockchain, try this article from Cornell:  https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.08749.pdf )

Blockchain is the poster child for disruptive technology.  Once it takes hold, blockchain will create a new industry that has the potential to replace the way we approach most digital transactions.  And not just financial transactions.  Within the next few years, you could see vastly improved security on your health record, certainty in the food supply or even managing verifiable identities of refugees, healthcare providers and others.  While this transformation may be a few years away, understanding how it works and the benefits it can bring will certainly be helpful in your career.  Like today’s smart phone, we’ll eventually wonder how we ever got along without it.

So, what’s up with Blockchain in the Sacramento area?

  • iDDriven is a Sacramento-based company that leverages blockchain technology in enterprise Identity and Access Management (IAM).
  • Last November, Sacramento Regional Transit’s IT System was held ransom for 1 BTC (bitcoin), which at the time was worth about $8,000 USD.
  • Midtown’s HackerLab offered a class on contracting using blockchain, Solidity and Ethereum on January 15.
  • Interested in learning about hyperledger? The Sacramento Blockchain Code Forum focuses on this open source blockchain approach.
  • Have you seen the Bitcoin ATMs all over the area?

So, what’s the next possible disruptive technology?  Could it be Hashgraph?

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