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ARTICLE · 16 MARCH 2017

Blockchain And Secured Lending In Canada

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Blockchain, the peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology introduced in 2008 to support Bitcoin, has lately attracted attention for its potential uses in areas unrelated to the virtual currency.

CanadaTechnology
Simon Grant
Simon Grant
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Blockchain, the peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology introduced in 2008 to support Bitcoin, has lately attracted attention for its potential uses in areas unrelated to the virtual currency. A recent Harvard Business Review article predicted that blockchain has the potential to "slash the cost of transactions and reshape the economy," and to become "the system of record for all transactions".

In essence, blockchain is a bookkeeping method, which can be public (like Bitcoin) or private. Among its key innovations as a distributed ledger are the "chains" between entries which are distributed among multiple network users, making those entries difficult to alter. Unlike a conventional or "centralized" ledger, in which a single authority serves as the "trusted third party", in a blockchain each network user has its own verified copy of the distributed ledger and can immediately see the transaction on the ledger.

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