While we live in an age of exponential technological
innovation, true black-swan breakthroughs are still rare. Most
of our technological development is either incremental, or
developing along predictable lines. But blockchain is one of those
rare breakthroughs that are as innovative as they are unexpected,
as timely as they are revolutionary.
Blockchain was first deployed in 2009 as part of the Bitcoin
peer-to-peer electronic cash system that was invented by the
pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto during the height of the
financial crisis on 2007-2009.
It is essentially a distributed ledger that is cryptographically
distributed across a number of nodes that cooperate using game
theory to guarantee the integrity of the records. As a result, the
value recorded on this distributed ledger can be transmitted in
minutes across the globe, from one person to another, without the
need of any central authority to regulate and guarantee the asset
and its transaction.
