Blockchain is a new network that will help us decentralize trade and make it easier to do more peer to peer transactions. Cutting out some of the middle man, like banks, corporations and stores. Normally when people make trades we need to go to a store or know another person to purchase from. Blockchain makes it possible to do that with without a store or company. With blockchain we can guarantee the same trade that happens at a bank without all the middle men. Cryptography helps the blockchain verify the transaction.
Blockchain is a technology that allows us to trade one to one but at scale. There is an interface for it, like an app or something you could you use on your computer. Instead of their being a company in the middle helping you to make that transaction, what is helping you make a transaction is a bunch of software code. Its being run by all of these different computers that have a node, so they are all running the same software and guaranteeing your transactions as they happen.
A lot of people think about blockchain as bitcoin because it is in the news a lot and its this new cryptocurrency but we are actually seeing a lot of uses for block chain that aren’t on the currency side. They are more on figuring out how to take any asset and be able to trade it using the same technology. A lot of people are working on ways to verify the users of blockchain. One of the ways of doing that is being able to cryptographically sign. So your government could verify that you have a passport etc. These identity structures will leverage blockchain.
One of the problems that we face with blockchain is public education. When we think of bitcoin there have been problems with hacking etc, making people not trust it. Education will be a big part of introducing this technology before it is used by average people. There are a lot of public blockchains like bitcoin, but there are also a lot of companies are getting together to build private blockchains and develop them before making them public to everyone when people feel comfortable using them. This research process is making it possible for blockchain to eventually grow and see what the best use cases are for block chain and what it means for trade. Were going to see problems with this technology and we will need to develop multiple kinds of standards but it is also going to be a system that allows us to fix some of the things that are wrong with the system today.
Blockchain can be very confusing but at the root it is just another tool for humans to trade at scale and make the trade more decentralized. It is a part of the future and will without a doubt play some role in the future of economics, which is why it is important to start to learn about it and gain an understanding of what blockchain is and how it works. We are excited to see what the future holds!
