I’m sure you have heard the word trade once or twice. But do you know that in the coming future trade won’t be the same as the one we know right now, walk with me as I explain to you everything you need to know about blockchain? There are many types of trade but today let’s focus on one trade here which is blockchain, in simple terms ill give you an example of how a blockchain is a form of trade. Let’s say I was to sell my laptop I would find a store that I can trust,eBay being one of them Amazon, jiji Kenya, etc.
But most of the time your first option is not eBay or Jumia It’s that one friend who told you that he had a friend who also wanted a laptop or would give you a great deal even if it’s something in return. But whenever a deal exceeds more than one person, it’s completely difficult to trust each other.
After having the same problem for a while, another friend introduced me to the blockchain. and that’s why I want you my friend to know it, and have a better understanding of it.
what is blockchain?
Blockchain technology is just the same as the one I mentioned before but instead of having that middle friend to connect you with the buyer, This time now you are granted the power to connect directly without having any middlemen.
When I talk about middlemen I mean banks, brands, and companies that connect you and get something in return. Actually, in our world, it’s hard to trust any of these companies, especially if you are trading or exchanging something sensitive.
How does blockchain work?
It’s basically a network of computers with the same transaction history. So instead of one bank company having all your transaction data. Now with blockchain, you can have that information on your computer, I can also have it on mine, and with this technology, the transactions are validated by everyone to make sure the transaction is legit.
If everyone validates, how do I believe blockchain is secure?
Don’t worry if you are asking yourself this, we have all been there? Blockchain uses cryptography to basically encode all the transactions. So everyone can actually see all the validated transactions.
But you can not read what exactly was sold or bought. And remember even if anyone can see the transactions it’s not actually trackable of who actually did the transaction since all the data is encoded. In conclusion, blockchain is like a ledger transaction system where all things that are being traded are not owned by a single company but by everyone in the world, that’s why in other words blockchain is referred to us peer to peer network.
Is blockchain the same as bitcoin?
As much as you would love to hear me say yes blockchain is bitcoin, the answer is No, why ill tell you. Maybe the first time to hear bitcoin was in a movie where the bad guys maybe kidnapped someone. and asked to be paid in bitcoin or even after a hacker hacking maybe your laptop asks for money in terms of bitcoin did you ever ask yourself why?
Many say that bitcoin is used to do illegal businesses, but that is a big misconception. Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency at the time of writing this blog and is mostly used to trade. across the internet and even in other areas, even banks, this is because it’s simple and ideal and the best part is that its value keeps rising up and if you are an investor bitcoin is something you should look at. if you are interested to know more about bitcoin and other trade tokens, read here.
Is bitcoin the future?
As of now blockchain is still in the research state and researchers are still finding some of the use cases to use blockchain. But as of now, there are a lot of public blockchains like bitcoin and Ethereum and even types of private bitcoins that are not yet released but eventually will.
What we are sure of is that blockchain is surely going to be the future of trade and this means dying of companies like banks or even business middlemen. But companies that will use blockchain technology will surely thrive, another use case of blockchain is cryptography actually a good example is the WhatsApp app which uses cryptography to encrypt messages from the sender and receiver making sure all the conversation is kept between the two of you safe and secret.