Few technologies have the potential to disrupt old institutions as much as blockchain – a system that maintains records on huge networks of individual computers. As with any new technology, it could be used for social good – such as supporting people who are priced-out of the current bank accounts – but the big challenge is how to limit its unintended consequences.
At its heart, blockchain is a list of ‘blocks’ of digital information – any information – that is not stored in one place, but copied to computers in numerous different places. In principle, information stored in this way is accessible to anyone, and is also harder to corrupt, because corruption would need to occur simultaneously in a majority of the identical copies.
The most famous application of blockchain is bitcoin, a completely virtual currency that sidelines all banks and governments. In 10 years bitcoin’s value has gone from almost zero to thousands of euros – although in the past year or so it has been in decline. […]
The rest of this article is available here.