Matthew Leising recently wrote an article entitled “JPMorgan Says Blockchain is Laying Foundation for Digital Money”. If you’re at all familiar with blockchain, then you know that it’s about advancing more than money. The term ‘blockchain’ refers to a group of technologies that support distributed ledger’s. The original blockchain, Bitcoin, was designed to be decentralized and open source. What has transpired since then are numerous applications to compliment Bitcoin.
The Onboarding of Big Banks
The fact that JP Morgan spoke about blockchain for all digital money rather than their own coin indicates that the technology is making real progress. This is what blockchain is about, industry- and economic-wide change on a global scale. It’s not about another fanciful ledger to replace the existing architecture of a corporate network. Some developers have envisioned a world where blockchain is itself a network on scale with the Internet. How is this possible? And what may transpire? These are questions that the general public may soon become aware of.
Value Assignment and the Timestamp Function
A blockchain network is essentially globalized. This is the nature of the Internet and, it is the future of any viable digital technology. What blockchain does is provide a way to assign value to digital assets. A digital asset is anything that provides a function for users. It does not just refer to representing real world goods in the digital space.
What might confuse some is the way in which the term value is used for blockchain-based assets. A value in mathematics or in computer science refers to something that fills a placeholder. Blockchain is self-descriptive in its broad application. Blocks of empty place holders are linked together in a series (or chain). The tech is described as a blocks-on-a-chain because the series is necessitated in chronological order for the timestamp mechanism. The timestamp function can be used for information locating purposes of the value stored within each block.
User Settled Payments
These descriptions overly simplified blockchain but illustrate what Bitcoin succeeded in achieving. However, Bitcoin has been said to be slow and cumbersome. This is where smart contracts come in and the impact of Etherium. The article pays homage to both Bitcoin and Ether for their contributions toward modernizing global payments. Smart contracts and smart money will put users in control of administrative authority and payment settlements of their assets.
