While the media has been focused on the skyrocketing value of Bitcoin and public trading features, the real transformative technology in my opinion is blockchain which is the infrastructure Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are built on.
Taylor Gerring, one of the co-founders of the Ethereum Foundation which is the nonprofit that manages the administration and development of Ethereum, was recently interviewed on WTTW’s show Chicago Tonight. He is also an international blockchain consultant and speaker who runs the educational website Blockchain.wtf.
The Q&A discussion begins with Taylor explaining what a blockchain is and when it came into existence. He also discusses how blockchain technology can be applied to different industries depending on the properties of blockchain they would like to apply. For example, one area highly popular with auditors and regulators is an idea of triple-entry accounting. By using cryptographic data structure, you not only have a debit and credit, but also a cryptographic receipt making it difficult to fudge the numbers.
Taylor also addresses why the security potential of blockchain is so attractive to governments and companies that store sensitive information.
“One area that I’m personally passionate about is fixing some of the problems of the internet and how our data is siloed with particular providers. It leads to this problem where hackers have this huge honeypot of information. If we think about the Equifax breach – there’s a couple hundred million people’s data all sitting in one location. If you can breach that one location, you have access to a huge treasure trove of data.”
While there is a tremendous potential with blockchain technology, he advises that one shouldn’t think that it can be a silver bullet for anything and everything. That will never be the case for a singular technology. He does think that blockchain, in some form, will become so prevalent in our everyday lives that we won’t even think about it similar to web technologies.
To read the full article and watch the interview, visit WTTW’s Chicago Tonight.