The Potential Of the BlockChain

An evaluation of Bettina Warburg’s TED talk.

https://www.ted.com/talks/bettina_warburg_how_the_blockchain_will_radically_transform_the_economy

At this point, most of you have heard of Bitcoin. The new money that isn’t money? The thing that has all of the economists freaking out and getting angry? Some strange digital currency made by an unknown person that exists within the internet that can’t be removed?!

There is an underlying technology at work here known as the blockchain. Bettina explains, the blockchain is an immutable ledger which removes the need for a 3rd party and records complete asset and transaction history on every copy of itself. All of this protected behind some of the most advanced cryptography that exists today. So the concept of this running money is both incredible and terrifying. Most of the negative information that exists revolves around the purported value of said currency and the aspect of it being a bubble. Both of these are the human part of this technology, more a symptom than an aspect of the tech itself. Today a bank holds your money, they give you a card and you use that to use your money. This is the 3rd party involved. They move the money  at their pace and with their security technology and you are subject to their rules. There are actually banks which do not allow debit purchases of bitcoin and will literally block the transaction. This is a reaction by the bank, because moving money to crypto is moving money out of the entire system, while using your card to buy stocks is still within the same system.

So the big thing here is that the money stores the record of all the money, who holds what, and all transactions as they happen. The money is also the record. When you hold money in bitcoin you hold an address to a traceable spot on the blockchain. And everyone has the same record and same access to such. When it is updated, it updates the entire blockchain everywhere it exists. Transaction verification is done via multiple nodes agreement on the same ledger. It’s all done within a program that is protected from manipulation. Even if one were to hack it and change it, the hacker would have to change it on every computer it exists.

The implications for that are astounding when you remove the concept from currency and start thinking other applications. Identification theft would be impossible if it was on the blockchain. Medical records could never be lost and would be accessible anywhere. Sourcing of food and products in trade over borders would allow for better tracking and safety. All of this automated by a computer system that was in place to ensure the truth was always available and protected from tampering. Imagine a world where every politicians every action was recorded into a blockchain and retrievable. Accountability on a level that suits our technological era. This technology is the culmination of so many things, it could truly be the next internet.