Dangerous Trends Facing Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency

If you a 21st century African that does online transactions or you live in the third world countries, then you would have heard of blockchain, cryptocurrency and its likes and in fact you might even have been skeptical about being involved in it because of the propaganda of it being the devil's "mark of the beast" currency. A critical look into this and how it is changing the narratives in Africa and the rest of the world.

It is helping Africans process financial transactions more faster and it is even the best alternative for payment.

What you may not know is what the G7 countries are planning on blockchain technology.

Before we go into that lets get some base groundwork on blockchain and cyrptocurrency.

What is a Cryptocurrency?

A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency designed to work as a medium of exchange. It uses cryptography(encryption) to secure and verify transactions as well as to control the creation of new units of a particular cryptocurrency. The first cryptocurrency is called Bitcoin. It was created in 2016 and It uses a technology called blockchain technology. The design for Bitcoin came in after the global financial stock market crash in 2008 but was only fully functional in 2016.

Blockchain technology is most simply defined as a decentralized, distributed ledger that records the provenance of a digital asset. It is, an immutable time-stamped series record of data that is distributed and managed by cluster of computers. I will compare this to our traditional financial system later.

What are the 3 pillars of blockchain technology?

Decentralization, Transparency, Immutability

What is Blockchain used for?

Initially, used for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies blockchain has now found use cases in several industries including finance, real estate, and health.

Did you know that Blockchain can put the patient at the center of the health care data ecosystem, enabling them to hold their own record and control providers' access to it.

Blockchain has many applications in healthcare, and can improve mobile health applications, monitoring devices, sharing and storing of electronic medical records, clinical trial data, and insurance information storage.

Who controls the blockchain?

An open blockchain network has no central authority — it is the very definition of a democratized system. Since it is a shared and immutable ledger, the information in it is open for anyone and everyone to see.

How Does Blockchain Technology Work?

Based on a peer-to-peer (P2P) topology, blockchain is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) that allows data to be stored globally on thousands of servers – while letting anyone on the network see everyone else's entries in near real-time. That makes it difficult for one user to gain control of, or game, the network.

How is Blockchain different from traditional technologies?

Blockchain is decentralized, and thus, the ability to change the data is not centralized, Whereas, when it comes to traditional Databases, then everything relies on client-server architecture and everything is centralized. Decentralized Control- In Blockchain, we have no centralized system of control.

Have you heard of Stablecoin? Did you know that the G7 countries are planning to oust Bitcoin with stable coin? Did you also know that Facebook Calibra(Libra) is a stablecoin?

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to minimize the volatility of the price of the stablecoin, relative to some "stable" asset or basket of assets. A stablecoin can be pegged to a cryptocurrency, fiat money, or to exchange-traded commodities (such as precious metals or industrial metals).

To be continued.............!

Omasanjuwa Ogharandukun