In dieser Woche führte der US-Bundesstaat zum ersten Mal in der US-amerikanischen Geschichte Wahlen mit Unterstützung der Blockchain-Technologie durch. Diese Wahlmöglichkeit blieb zwar auf einige wenige Wähler beschränkt, dennoch könnte der Weg in Richtung weitere Ausbreitung der Technologie nun gegangen werden. „Country roads, take me home,….” West Virginia ist den meisten bekannt als Heimat und…Der Beitrag erschien zuerst auf .
Because I write about technology I am regularly assailed by people who are exercised about so-called “cryptocurrencies” like bitcoin, which most of them regard as a scam. But when I reply that while bitcoin might be newsworthy, the really important story concerns the blockchain technology that underpins it, their eyes glaze over and they start looking for the nearest exit as they conclude that they are in the grip of .
And, in a sense, they are. Blockchain technology is indeed important, but it seems largely incomprehensible to ordinary mortals, even though the web teems with . This is partly because cryptography lies at its core, and since crypto involves complex mathematics it therefore lies beyond the ken of most people. But if one is prepared to take the maths as given, then really the basic idea is simple. As Don and Alex Tapscott put it in their book, , a blockchain “is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value”.
