The bitcoin blockchain, which uses ‘Proof-of-Work Mining’, is the most publicly proven method used to achieve distributed consensus. However, other forms of distributed ledger consensus exist such as Ethereum, Ripple, Hyperledger, MultiChain, Eris, and other private enterprise solutions.
Illinois taps blockchain to spur government efficiencies,
What piqued your interest in bringing blockchain into the public sector?
Wons: Blockchain to me is our next interoperable platform that needs to be put into place to really enable effective business and citizen electronic interactions. We started a working group about a year ago with people who were interested. At first, it was the first the technology people, but we brought folks together from all of the agencies and started talking about the capabilities.
A college student sent me a one-page paper about how she believed that blockchain could fundamentally change the way that Illinois is perceived among the states and change the way that we transact business. She saw Illinois becoming the blockchain center of the universe. It was interesting, so I had her come and have a conversation with the team.
What ideas did you get?
Wons: We had 21 responses from the RFI that had good data points, but we didn’t learn anything new from the RFIs other than the space was emerging and it was hot. The responses talked a lot about the potential and future, but there weren’t a lot of practical use cases. So we brought agency directors together to talk about how blockchain could improve services for citizens. We came up with 25 use cases that we thought could fundamentally improve services at a lower price point for government.
We worked to narrow down the use cases and selected five of them as proofs of concept to deliver this year. Our first project addresses property deed management. The second is looking at credentialing for students transcripts. The third one is a blockchain for health care providers that validates that they are PII certified and they can provide the services. The process of a provider getting certified in the state and them getting reimbursed is a long, structured process. This will allow the activity to occur electronically through blockchain technology. The fourth project will create a clean energy marketplace using blockchain for energy credits. The fifth one is for vital records -- we are thinking of putting birth certificates on the blockchain, making them available forever electronically.
What did you learn from the Delaware Blockchain Initiative?
Wons: We did model some of our activity after Delaware’s program to support blockchain use, but we have taken it to a deeper level with this transaction-based approach. For us, blockchain is the next generation of the internet. It is essentially an interoperability platform to work with trusted partners through distributed networks to complete transactions at a lower cost, which fundamentally changes our activities.
When citizens interact with government today, they are filing out a piece of paper or submitting a form online, but they don’t know where it goes. Through leveraging blockchain, we can create a common, stored digital record that can be securely managed through a core process whether it is inside or outside the government.
Lawmakers in Illinois have struggled to pass a budget for close to two years to fund state government. How does the lack of funding impact your technology work?
Wons: Not having a budget has actually been good for us because it forced people to start using technology. For example, previously we were spending $20 million to mail out notifications to citizens to renew their license plate stickers and suddenly we didn’t have the budget for that. So we put the renewal process online, which enabled a much cleaner interaction with citizens because they no longer need to fill out paperwork and send it back to us. They are able to get notifications and reminders via email, which has improved our service.
Not having a budget forced us to become more efficient so it has been sort of a godsend. We don’t want to stay in this position forever because we realize that there are things that still need to be resolved with our debt. In state government, there are political issues as well with legislative pressures, but despite that we have been able to do some significant things around mobile initiatives and blockchain.
These digitally recorded "blocks" of data is stored in a linear chain. Each block in the chain contains data (e.g. bitcoin transaction), is cryptographically hashed. The blocks of hashed data draw upon the previous-block (which came before it) in the chain, ensuring all data in the overall "blockchain" has not been tampered with and remains unchanged.
As a technology enabling greater data transparency, the opportunities blockchain offers are immense.
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Blockchain Data Storage Business Model Bitcoin
Blockchain is a data storage technology with implications for business that extend well beyond its most popular application to date — the virtual currency, Bitcoin. To be sure, the financial industry is taking notice of how it might use blockchain. Even the U.S. Federal Reserve is optimistic, and a consortium of 42 top banks recently demonstrated a proof of concept, with Barclays, BMO Financial Group, Credit Suisse, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HSBC, Natixis, Royal Bank of Scotland, TD Bank, UBS, UniCredit, and Wells Fargo trading mock shares and money. These are staid financial institutions, not breathless startups.
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Can Blockchain Technology Secure Your Vote?
How can we build more trust in future election results? Can we securely move to online voting to increase voter turnout? Some experts think that blockchain technology is part of the answer, and this interview with Votem CEO Pete Martin covers where we are and where we are heading to secure the vote.
Blockchain is a permanent cryptographic record, or ledger, of digital events that’s “distributed,” or shared among many different parties. It can only be updated by consensus of the participants in the system. Once entered onto the ledger, information can never be erased and it contains a cryptographically verifiable record of every single transaction (vote) ever made. Because “independent authorities” who may not trust each other need to attest to the accuracy of every transaction and “agree” on whether to make it a permanent record or not, it provides a level of transparency and permanence not possible with current technology. This technology is immune to even “insider threats,” which is one of the largest vulnerabilities to current systems.
A granular and objective perspective on industry growth and profitability is critical for asset managers to operate effectively. For over a decade, we have built up a suite of products and services grounded in McKinsey’s deep industry expertise to help asset managers make better strategic, operational, and organizational decisions.
For any single balance, transaction, or change to the network to take place, there would need to be consensus amongst those validating the network – the miners. Since Bitcoin’s invent, many other programmers have attempted to use the model and tweak it to provide what they consider to be a more functional form of digital cash.
SteemFest Transfer Busses depart in the morning from the Hotel Fenix Lisboa area to Montes Claros in the hills in the North of Lisbon (10 minutes trip depending on traffic). This venue is like a huge villa with a neighbouring park and was build in the early 40's as part of development works in the area. The whole venue is dedicated to SteemFest. You can have a walk in the park and the venue has a huge balcony on the first floor adjecent to the buffet & breaks area. The catering here is top notch and after dinner we will go by busses to the Castello area down town Lisbon for 'A Night of Steem'.
This week got totally overshadowed by the tragic loss of fellow steemian 
Let's celebrate life, steem and share our passions in Lisbon at SteemFest²!
New names added to the SteemFest² siteSteemFest's HF Hotels Deal Still Available: from € 92 / room / night (incl breakfast) -Book before 15 september as the special booking site is closing by then and prices will rise even further.
Credit Suisse bank’s global head of software investment banking, James Disney, addressed the applications of Blockchain technology in the banking industry saying, ‘sky is the limit.’
He cited as an example the use of the technology in the processing of private equity transactions using leveraged buyouts financed with debt.
In his interview with CNBC’s “Fast Money” in mid-October 2017, Disney claimed that Blockchain can significantly reduce the time consumed in the processing of private equity transactions.
Visited Lisboa one more time last Thursday. It was an early flight in and late flight out. Managed to visit almost all venues and did a video tour in the meantime (soon to be published). Lisbon was hot and the summer holidays in full effect. Had a meeting with the coach company and talked through details with many of the venues. I almost missed my flight as my last appointment got delayed and then we hit the traffic on the way to the airport, however my Uber driver acted as if he was an 'official' cab taking all designated 'taxi'-lanes and the airport security line was fortunately very fast so I was one of the last ones for boarding.
You can think of a wallet as your personal interface to the Bitcoin network, similar to how your online bank account is an interface to the regular monetary system.
Bitcoin wallets contain private keys; secret codes that allow you to spend your bitcoins.
In reality, it’s not bitcoins that need to be stored and secured, but the private keys that give you access to them.
A hardware wallet is a physical electronic device, built for the sole purpose of securing bitcoins.
The core innovation is that the hardware wallet must be connected to your computer, phone, or tablet before bitcoins may be spent.
Trading involves the possibility of financial loss. Only trade with money that you are prepared to lose, you must recognise that for factors outside your control you may lose all of the money in your trading account. Many forex brokers also hold you liable for losses that exceed your trading capital. We have no knowledge on the level of money you are trading with or the level of risk you are taking with each trade. You must make your own financial decisions,
The inventor of the most famous cryptocurrency today – Bitcoin – attempted to build a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system”. This had been tried many times before but the main point of difference between Bitcoin and previous efforts like Digicash was that it was to be entirely decentralised. Without an overarching entity controlling the currency, the notion of “trust” would be removed from the system.
Hot wallets are Bitcoin wallets that run on internet connected devices like a computer, mobile phone, or tablet.
Private keys are secret codes. Because hot wallets generate your private keys on an internet connected device, these private keys can’t be considered 100% secure. payments, etc. Bitcoin is decentralized and is powered by what’s known as “Bitcoin Miners”.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 5 years, you’ve likely at least heard the word “Bitcoin” before. While you’ve almost certainly heard about it, there is a fair chance you don’t fully understand what it is, how it works, and why people are so excited about it.
The changes in mining in the past 5 years are radical. Not only that technology has evolved from initial CPU/GPU mining to highly specialized low nanometer Asic miners, Where in the beginning we had mostly home miners that ran a few machines at their house, we now have massive large scale operations that make nearly the whole market. A tiny fraction of the market is still from home miners, but those are mainly idealistically oriented to support the network or doing it for hobby since in an economical view there is simply no chance to compete anymore with the large scale operations using economy of scale and lowest electricity prices together with optimized infrastructure.
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A block is currently created every 3 seconds, about the average block time of Ripple. The network currently handles 3 transactions per block.
However, the BTS network is a complicated system capable of many higher order functions, similar to Ethereum, and currently handles about 2.8 operations per second or about 8.5 operations per block.
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Larimer believed that PoS is superior to Proof of Work (PoW) because the reliable node stakeholders of BTS have the best interests of the coin and security at heart. The developer was quick to admit that the consensus method is imperfect, PoS is vulnerable to 51% attack via shareholders, but believed the cost of acquiring 51% of BTS is much greater and acquiring 51% of the hashing power on a PoW system.
The network uses a deflationary supply system, with an available current supply of ~2.6 billion and a likely max supply of ~3.7 billion. BTS can also be burned, reducing total supply and increasing value for investors.
The BTS higher order functions allow for the creation of distributed autonomous companies (DACs), which are similar the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) created on Ethereum, and allow for rules based entities using smart contracts. https://steemit.com/blog/@alfa-good/tuesday-17-oktober-2017-posting-in-the-morning-a-pleasant-time-because-of-the-amazing-idea-20171017t5445687z ![image](