Back To Blockchain Basics
Do I need to understand how Blockchain works? Where does bitcoin fit in? And how long until this tech hits the mainstream? Your questions: answered!
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When it comes to Blockchain procurement pros don’t know what or who to believe, when to expect its takeover or how to prepare.
What’s the difference between bitcoin and blockchain, are they one and the same?
Do you need to understand the ins and outs of how the technology works?
Ahead of today’s Procurious webinar on Blockchain , Jack Shaw, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the American Blockchain Council, clears up some of the Blockchain basics!
Blockchain and bitcoin
“There is a widely held misunderstanding that blockchain and bitcoin are one and the same or inextricably connected with one another.
“In fact blockchain is an underlying enabling technology. Bitcoin and other digital crypto currencies are one of the first effective applications of that technology.”
“Think of it as being similar to the situation in 1990s with the emergence of the internet as an underlying enabling technology platform of which email was one of the first successful applications of internet technology and one of very many ways the internet is being used.”
Why you don’t need to understand Blockchain
“Blockchain is so highly technical that only people with advanced degrees in cyber science could possibly understand it.
“Often we get down into the weaves of the technical details of how blockchain works. I’ve found it helpful for procurement pros to understand what it is that blockchain does.
“You don’t need to be able to build an engine to know how to drive a car similarly you don’t need to understand every technical detail of how blockchain works in order to understand what it can do for you…”
What can Blockchain do for you?
“Blockchains do four things that we haven’t been able to do previously…
- Blockchains can create immutable signed and time stamped record of identity, ownership of assets, transactions or contractual commitments
- They allow that information to be shared among multiple entities; either people or businesses or other organisations, governmental agencies, across the internet without any of those entities having to depend on any one of the others to be the so called master record keeper. And without having to pay a third party intermediary for that service, which can take tremendous costs and delays out of inter-enterprise business processes
- They allow that information to be shared with complete transparency among all those authorised to see that information and the subset of those that are authorised to update it by adding new information
- [Blockchains are] virtually unhackable in terms of preventing those not authorised to update that information from doing so or even being able to see it”
The combination of those four capabilities means Blockchain provides a tool for the use and sharing of information across business and social ecosystems that goes far beyond the ability to exchange value via currencies. It, in fact, gives it the potential to impact every aspect of our personal and organisational lives.
When will blockchain hit the mainstream?
“I’ve been around emerging technologies for so long that I’ve finally come to recognise these things do not simply suddenly switch on full-blown and ready for everyone in the world to use at once. [adoption] increases over time.
“Blockchain is coming along much more quickly than the internet. Widespread adoption of Blockchain technology will be in place within the next two or three years. Most of the major IT solution providers are already actively in the process of delivering blockchain enabled capabilities.”
But wait, the blockchain action doesn’t stop here! Join us on October 15 with blockchain experts Shari Diaz, Innovation Strategy and Operations Program Director, IBM Watson Supply Chain and Professor Olinga Ta’eed, Director of the Centre for Citizenship, Enterprise and Governance in this webinar brought to you by IBM and Procurious. Click here to register for Blockchain: Supply Chain’s 21st Century Truthsayer.
