The financial and technological industries are coming together
to explore the possibilities in blockchain, or distributed ledgers,
the technology underlying the digital currency bitcoin. Blockchain
offers the potential to become an essential component of the
infrastructure for the Internet of Things. We explore some of the
opportunities and challenges.
What is blockchain?
A blockchain is simply a database or ledger. Given its broad
meaning, it can be a database of virtually any recordable
information (for instance, the transfer of bitcoins). Simply,
blockchains store data in "blocks", and "chain"
them together to form a cohesive, unbroken record of that
information.
The joint operation of two features in particular makes
blockchain revolutionary. First, identical copies of the particular
blockchain (or ledger) are stored on and accessed from many
computers around the world - sometimes in the thousands or more.
Any attempted addition or change to the information
