Blockchain is the world's leading software platform for digital
assets, offering the largest production block chain platform in
the world. The first blockchain was conceptualized by Satoshi
Nakamoto in 2008 and implemented the following year as a core
component of the digital currency bitcoin, where it serves as
the public ledger for all transactions. A blockchain database is
managed autonomously and registered transactions cannot be
altered retroactively.
It is a distributed
database that maintains a continuously growing list of ordered
records called blocks. Each block contains a timestamp and a
link to a previous block. By design, blockchains are inherently
resistant to modification of the recorded data. Once recorded,
the data in a block cannot be altered retroactively. Blockchains
are "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions
between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and
permanent way.
Blockchains are suitable for the
recording of events, medical records, other records management
activities, identity management, and transaction processing. Various
regulatory bodies in the music industry have started testing
models that use blockchain technology for royalty collection and
management of copyrights around the world. Previously unimagined
applications, from digitally recorded property assets to
regulatory compliance and trading are now actively being
developed and deployed. Automated voting systems may prove to be the
ultimate blockchain-based technology beyond bitcoin.
Blockchain is a large electronic system, on
top of which you can build applications. Currency, like
bitcoin is one of those applications. Millions of users and
hundreds of thousands of merchants currently use bitcoin
digital currency. You can buy and sell bitcoins on PayPal and
buy with your credit card or cash. Bitcoin is the
decentralized, global, democratized, highly secure
cryptocurrency. It use has grown immensely since it began and
this global currency is completely separate from any government
and its price is not subject to political manipulation. Last
time I looked, one bitcoin was worth over a thousand US dollars.