Blockchain Explained: What you need to know

As emerging technologies continue to revolutionise the way we live and transact, concepts like ‘cryptocurrency’ and ‘blockchain’ are becoming increasingly relevant to our collective financial future.

Major banks are already talking about and beginning to use blockchain, a technology that could drive the digital transactions of the future. And it’s become a major buzzword in financial circles around the world for its potential to change the exchange of value as we currently know it.

While the technology itself is in the very early stages of existence and is complicated to understand, businesses and entrepreneurs around the globe are looking at ways to effectively use it in the belief that blockchain could be the next big worldwide innovation.

So what exactly is blockchain technology and why is it important?

How Do You Use Blockchain?

Blockchain is a peer-to-peer technology aimed at simplifying financial transactions of value.

Think of it as a program like Uber — except instead of taking taxis out of the equation to get you from place A to place B, you take can take out any third-party body, whether it be banks, governments or streaming services, in order to get anything from money to land titles to music royalties from person A to person B.

The plus side is — all of the really technical, complicated ‘nuts and bolts’ of a blockchain process happens behind-the-scenes.

As Grantly Mailes, the CEO of Civic Ledger, a company that uses blockchain systems to solve public sector problems, told HuffPost Australia the entire process happens via a peer-to-peer app or a website accessible with an Internet connection and is as easy as pressing a few buttons.

“If you and I are wanting to exchange value over the Internet, at the moment we typically rely on a third party. There’s a lot of value taken out of the system by these intermediaries,” he said.

“If I can sell you a good and you trust that I’ve shipped the good, it allows for peer-to-peer trading in a trusted way without intermediaries who add friction and cost.

“Banks have been around for centuries to solve the trust problem between two people who want to exchange value, imagine now a world where we can do that without that bank.”

 

So in simple terms, Mailes said if you want to give something of value to someone else using Blockchain, you open up your app (and there are many, including apps that work as ‘digital wallets’), type in a unique, identifying code linked to the person you want to give it to and the unique code for whatever object of value you want to give and submit it.

To read more, please click on the link below…

Source: Blockchain Explained: What You Need To Know – Huffington Post Australia