Blockchain is one of the biggest buzzwords in technology right now. But what is it? And why are all your friends and family talking about it?
Let’s start from the beginning. The first major application of blockchain technology was bitcoin which was released in 2009. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and the blockchain is the technology that underpins it. A cryptocurrency refers to a digital coin that runs on a blockchain.
Understanding how the blockchain works with bitcoin will allow us to see how the technology can be transferred to many other real-world use cases.
Bitcoin is the brainchild of a mysterious person or group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody knows the identity of Nakamoto, but their vision was laid out in a 2009 whitepaper called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”
