{"id":1802,"date":"2019-07-05T05:42:42","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T05:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kusuaks7\/?p=1407"},"modified":"2023-09-13T10:11:40","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T10:11:40","slug":"blockchain-the-radical-metamorphosis-shaping-our-financial-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/fintech\/blockchain-the-radical-metamorphosis-shaping-our-financial-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Blockchain\u200a -\u200aThe Radical Metamorphosis Shaping Our Financial Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blockchain has its critics, but no one can doubt the efficacy and trust factor it can bring to finance in the future. Those that fear it, however, are the ones who will see their revenues fall. The financial service industry is on a knife\u2019s edge, and blockchain technology is there to witness the impending collapse.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Refurbishment<\/h3>\n

The future is definitely out there, but whatever it is, it\u2019s our own making, our own destiny. To refurbish what we\u2019ve already accomplished, and to go beyond it is going to take a great effort. However, there is one kind of technology that can do all this and more, especially in the financial sector. Surprisingly, though, it isn\u2019t AI nor Robotics. Neither big data nor quantum computers. Not even, thank goodness, social media. It is called the blockchain, and it\u2019s coming for you, it\u2019s coming for all of us.<\/p>\n

Lenin created the perfect revolution, but not the best. That\u2019s been saved till\u00a0now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Blockchain, to describe it in simple terms\u200a\u2014\u200aor as simply as can be expressed without inundating you with technical words and geek-speak\u200a\u2014\u200ais the underlying technology of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Although often confused with the digital currencies as being the same thing, they are inherently different.<\/p>\n

Air of Nonchalance<\/h3>\n

Since the first email was sent by\u00a0Ray Tomlinson in 1971<\/a>, to the genesis of\u00a0the Internet in 1989<\/a>, we have ridden the wave of technology with what some might call an \u2018air of nonchalance\u2019. This is no surprise, actually: innovations have come thick and fast, one after the other, in a continuous stream of wondrous techmanity that has even outstripped the magnificent achievements for inventions and human endeavour in 15th and 16th century Italy and the 1800s in Great Britain.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ray Tomlinson, Sender of the first email. Source:timesofap.com<\/span><\/p>\n

But that was all before the blockchain arrived, which if it promises to do what the specialists in the field are telling us, will change the financial landscape of the world for all time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the advent of the internet, we as individuals and society have been able to disseminate information across borders and over continents at great distances with the click of a mouse. Documents, emails and text messages. The internet can send them all.<\/p>\n

No big deal, right?<\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet what the blockchain can offer us is something different, a more secure environment for delivering and transferring information.<\/p>\n

Lessons Learned<\/h3>\n

Take money, for instance. One of man\u2019s greatest inventions, and something very important to us. Fiat currencies, those controlled by governments and central banks, are at the core of everything we do in regard to trade, exchange and banking services. Bonds, stocks, financial assets, too\u200a\u2014\u200aare all tied to fiat currencies and business. If something goes wrong with it, and the whole house comes tumbling down, there\u2019s trouble.<\/p>\n

2008 saw that\u00a0happen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When we send a document on the internet, all we are actually doing is sending a copy of it, a facsimile of the original content. It doesn\u2019t really matter how many times we do it because it is only a reproduction. With money, however, this would be a very bad thing to do.<\/p>\n

This phenomenon, called double-spending by cryptographers, is one of the big problems facing cryptocurrencies and the blockchain ecosystem.<\/em><\/p>\n

When one person transfers money to another, it is of paramount importance that I, as the sender, do not still possess the money after I have transferred it to the recipient.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Presently, to complete these types of transfers with fiat currencies, the financial world relies on middlemen or agents, to verify and accomplish this task, which in turn, establishes trust in the financial markets. These intermediaries usually come in the form of banks, governments and other high-level institutions. Up to now, they have generally (with some blips) done a good job.<\/p>\n

(Boos and sighs go\u00a0up)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Cure<\/h3>\n

Yet, cracks have appeared in their system, especially in relation to our high-tech, switched-on world, where data is vulnerable to hacking and other odious invasions.<\/p>\n

<\/canvas><\/figure>\n

Photo by\u00a0freestocks.org<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n

There are countless examples of financial institutions with multi-million-dollar cybersecurity systems suffering ignominious data breaches:\u00a0<\/em>Citigroup in 2011<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>JP Morgan Chase in 2014<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>First American Financial Corporation this year.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0These are just a few examples of such cases, but as times goes by, and hackers get smarter, things can only get worse.<\/em><\/p>\n

Blockchain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such companies, sadly to say, are dinosaurs in more ways than one. Take a bank transfer\u200a\u2014\u200aif you want to transfer money by traditional methods, it can take a few days. Across the globe, say to a poor African state with only a rudimentary banking system, a week or even more, all the while the bank takes a handsome cut in the percentage of the transfer.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s simply unfair.<\/p>\n

Blockchain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ten, fifteen, twenty percent commission, that just isn\u2019t right for doing virtually nothing.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s got to change.<\/p>\n

Blockchain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But there\u2019s more bad news.<\/p>\n

They steal your information, your data, the personal stuff about you, too\u200a\u2014\u200aa double whammy!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our privacy, the lives we live, are all being kept under tabs by a 21st century Stasi.<\/p>\n

Blockchain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Take a moment, if you will, just to think about this:<\/p>\n

These companies, colossal, magnates of the modern age, have stolen the endowment of the digital age, raped and slaughtered the masses, metaphorically speaking, to gain the upper hand, the power to control us, manipulate us, to mould the world as they see it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s wealth creation next to a growing poverty index.<\/p>\n

Blockchain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inequality is a fashion statement to be ashamed of.<\/p>\n

We have Trump and his New York coterie. Putin and his Russian oligarchs. High-ranking Chinese members of the Communist party. Arab oil billionaires. All members of a worldwide conspiracy of Freemasons, a club you and me ain\u2019t in, unfortunately.<\/p>\n

Now, do you believe me, that things have to change?<\/p>\n

And they have.<\/p>\n

We have an internet of information.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We have the blockchain.<\/p>\n

BB AND\u00a0AB<\/h3>\n

There should be a BC and AD of blockchain, but re-christened BB and AB:\u00a0Before Blockchain<\/em>\u00a0and After Blockchain<\/em>, because that\u2019s how groundbreaking it is. The world will never be the same after this, and who wants it to be, anyway?<\/p>\n

The blockchain is the global ledger, the internet of value, the information system available to every person with a pulse, where every human endeavour\u200a\u2014\u200abe it creative, pecuniary or free-form\u200a\u2014\u200ais available peer-to-peer, unshackled by the restraints of governance, third-party exorbitant charges and copyright issues.<\/p>\n

Storage. Management. Transactions. All sorted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the new age, motherfucker. And without the haemorrhoids of intermediaries to contend with.<\/p>\n

Because now we have a universal value system.<\/p>\n

Jesus, thank goodness for brains, for foresight.\u00a0Satoshi Nakamoto<\/a>, the person (or persons) who sprung up from the Land of Nowhere in 2008 and saved the future world from travesty with his white paper on a new protocol for digital cash, a cryptocurrency, called Bitcoin, should be awarded a Nobel prize.<\/p>\n

But he won\u2019t be, of course.<\/p>\n

Because the men upstairs, those cretins in control, won\u2019t let him\/her\/them\/it receive it.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t care, though, because Bitcoin lets the masses establish trust and do transactions with financial modalities without the hassle of third-party dopes who are a waste of oxygen.<\/em><\/p>\n

Satoshi\u2019s maneuver, somehow, incited the about-face stance with the financial degradation not seen since the Wall Street Crash of \u201987 and 2008\u2019s debacle. The reversal in thought, a shock to the system for many, was a counter to that greed, the compulsion for wealth and \u2018show me the money philosophy\u2019 that marinated most of the ethos pre-bitcoin.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, Bitcoin is nothing more than a speculative asset, something that goes up and down, at least at the moment. If you like the stock market, or cryptocurrency trading platforms like Coinbase and Binance, then go for it. You may make a shitload of cash,\u00a0fiat variety, that is<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To gain currency status, I don\u2019t know, could take a long time, maybe never.<\/em><\/p>\n

Global Dodge<\/h3>\n

The fiat currency of today, regulated by Trump and all the other sheriffs in the Global Dodge, controls the market of all nation states.<\/p>\n

And grateful you and me should be for this.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s still blockchain.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And the blockchain is going to create a society based on trust and common motivation for peer-to-peer transactions without the scams, without the criminality, without all of the bullshit many people face every day through the schemes of banks and other untrustworthy financial establishments, through some clever coding in cryptography.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The most powerful sheriff in town. Source:\u00a0upi.com\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So, how, you may ask, does the blockchain technology work?<\/h4>\n

Simple.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, money or any other digital asset has been centralized, but with blockchain, the global ledger, it is spread out, disbursed across all member (called nodes) and utilizing the highest level of cryptography known to man. Once a transaction has been completed, it is sent across the world to all the other nodes, so they all have a copy of the transaction.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more. People called Bitcoin miners, these are big players. Some are individuals, others operating in groups in what are called mining farms, and they have powerful computers to work with.<\/em><\/p>\n

So what do these miners do, and why are they so important for the operation of the blockchain?<\/h4>\n

Every so often, let\u2019s say every few minutes, a block of transactions gets created on the blockchain, which has on it every transaction done within that specified amount of time. This is where the miners earn their supper: immediately, they get to work, competing with each other, trying to crack and then validate the block. Once successful, they are rewarded with Bitcoin or any other altcoin on a specified blockchain.<\/p>\n

What happens then is a stroke of genius: That block, now validated, is connected to the preceding block, which has been connected to the one before it and so forth. Each of these blocks has a timestamp embedded on it, which secures the block, and all other blocks, from being hacked by double-spending trickery. This works on the premise that to hack the block, the hacker would have to hack all blocks at the same time in that chain across the millions and millions of nodes across the blockchain ecosystem, which are secured by the most advanced encryption devices available.<\/p>\n

Impossible, or almost that.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the blockchain. This is what it does.<\/p>\n

The Guilt<\/h3>\n

For decades the traditional ways of moving fiat currency and doing business have been in the hands of the few, using complicated, outdated methods that have had their day but are still, quite unbelievably, used to the detriment, in most cases, of society.<\/p>\n

The financial service industry is the guilty party.<\/p>\n

Just think about it like this: I make a payment by card, say for a flat white at Starbucks. That payment then goes through numerous financial institutions, each of them with their own computer systems, until a few days later the transaction is settled.<\/p>\n

Whoopee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But it\u2019s not good. The status quo has to change.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where blockchain and cryptocurrency come in. With them, the payment and settlement are actually the same, completed instantaneously with no hassle and no extra cost.<\/p>\n

This revelation has the financial industry quaking in its boots. Cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology is there to take over its mantle. Now, the thought leaders in the financial industry are worried whether they should fight the coming onslaught or try to accept it as the new modality.<\/p>\n

The fear is warranted, though, because the blockchain could, for the first time in history, spread the wealth out because at its very essence the technology is fair, transparent, egalitarian, invented by people, just like Satoshi Nakamoto and others, who believe a system that benefits the few, as in the current financial model, is not in humanity\u2019s best interests.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s allow it to happen, and fast!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To refurbish what we’ve already accomplished, and to go beyond it is going to take a great effort. However, there is one kind of technology that can do all this and more, especially in the financial sector. Surprisingly, though, it isn’t AI nor Robotics, neither big data nor quantum computers. Not even, thank goodness, social media. It is called the blockchain, and it’s coming for you, it’s coming for all of us. Blockchain, which if it promises to do what the specialists in the field are telling us, will change the financial landscape of the world for all time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":590,"featured_media":3214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[99],"ppma_author":[3290],"class_list":["post-1802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fintech","tag-fintech"],"authors":[{"term_id":3290,"user_id":590,"is_guest":0,"slug":"james-dargan","display_name":"James Dargan","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Dargan","first_name":"James","job_title":"","description":"James Dargan is an experienced book author, Raconteur, content writer.  He writes about quantum computers, AI, cybersecurity, blockchain, cryptocurrency & transhumanism. He is a contributing writer at Hacker Noon, Altcoin Magazine, Chatbots Magazine, Chatbot’s Life, and Danny Boy Books. Check out his fiction on amazone.com<\/a>."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/590"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1802"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29843,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions\/29843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1802"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}