Blockchain Bootcamp 101 - an introduction to the fifth disruptive computing paradigm after mainframes, PCs, the Internet, and mobile/social networking

Blockchain Bootcamp 101 - an introduction to the fifth disruptive computing paradigm after mainframes, PCs, the Internet, and mobile/social networking.

Bitcoin is grounded on what is called the Blockchain. In in the few short years since Bitcoin came to life in 2009, people are beginning to realise across the world that the underlying technology which makes this new cryptocurrency so compelling is also capable of transforming our world in unique ways.

The Blockchain is fundamentally a new paradigm for organizing activity with less friction and more efficiency, and at much greater scale than current paradigms.

The Blockchain is so much more than an isolated technology using advanced forms of cryptography and a dencentralised ledger system. And it’s not only about efficiency or effectiveness… doing things 20 times faster or saving money but its power is that it enables people to organize themselves in new and different ways.

It’s a fundamental tool that can enable integrated socio-economic change.

Since we as human began to organise ourselves into communities some 10,000-12,000 years ago, we have struggled to find ways to live together in larger and larger groups. We have seen movements such as the Commons in the Middle Ages, to Democracy, Libertarianism, Communism, Authoritarianism and a slew of other isms’ trying to find a way to live together in relative harmony.

The problem is…all these old ways of organizing ourselves simply don't fit in the complexity of the new global world we live in.

We need to remove the temptation of unethical greed by making it impossible to cheat or be cheated by any one person, one company or one ideology.

We need to take the single out of trust and replace it with a hive of trust. Or what is also now called decentralised trust.

And the Blockchain can do it.

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Some quotes

The Blockchain is The most important invention since the Internet Itself.

— Marc Andreessen, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists

Wall Street is wisely exploring blockchain technology — about 20 banks have gone public about it, and my sense is that there are another 100 hiring teams, learning, experimenting, testing and engaging in the space — at this stage I can’t imagine a single CTO on Wall Street that doesn’t have the word ‘blockchain’ on their whiteboard.
— Matthew Roszak, Tally Capital Founding Partner

Forget Bitcoin, Blockchain’s The Revolution

— CNBC

In the same way that Napster and peer-to-peer file sharing changed the face of the recording industry, blockchain technology will force financiers to reconsider their traditional roles.

— Chris DeRose, community director of the Counterparty Foundation

But the real innovation is the blockchain itself, a protocol that allows for secure, direct (without a middleman), digital transfers of value and assets (think money, contracts, stocks, IP). Investors like Marc Andreesen have poured tens of millions into the development and believe this is as important of an opportunity as the creation of the Internet itself.

— Peter Diamandis, Futurist and the author of “Abundance – the Future is Better Than You Think” and “Bold – How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World

Blockchain technology will not only change the way we do payments, it will change the whole trading and settlement topic

— Oliver Bussmann, CIO, UBS.

Blockchain is a really disruptive development, and banks have a lot of fear concerning this technology because in the pure theory of blockchain, a lot of processes within a traditional bank would be obsolete.

— Thomas F Dapp, research analyst, Deutsche Bank.

Bitcoin gives us, for the first time, a way for one Internet user to transfer a unique piece of digital property to another Internet user, such that the transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. The consequences of this breakthrough are hard to overstate.

— Marc Andreessen, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists

"We’re seeing the database world evolve into the same permissions and structures and designs as the programming world. We’ve got classes with methods on it and the data is kept private. That’s all ablockchain is and what this leads me to conclude is that in the future all web applications are going to be following a blockchain structure." - Dan Larimer