As you know from my previous post, cryptocurrencies have the ability to fundamentally change the way our economy, business, and government function.

 

This section will cover the three prominent tokens in the crypto space: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Siacoin.

 

Bitcoin, the first and biggest player in cryptocurrency, provides a platform for financial transactions. In doing so it removes the fees and inefficiencies associated with sending money using traditional third parties. Also, and perhaps the most important, is that this removes the potential for corruption and risk that inherently come with centralizing information that way. Also, the ledger doesn’t care what Bitcoin represents - be it fiat currency, or anything else of value, like property. Each bitcoin is made up of 100 Million separate pieces. Each of these pieces are identifiable and programmable - a smart currency. A good example of application would be a healthcare allowance in Dollars that could only be used at certified places. In this scenario, you wouldn’t need to verify that someone actually follows the rules in the bureaucratic process afterwards. Another example is businesses can program their budgets for salaries, equipment, maintenance, ect. so that the respective money is specified and cannot be embezzled or spent on anything else. You can simply program the rules into the money and ensure compliancy upfront.

 

Ethereum is another popular cryptocurrency for investors like Bitcoin, but its purpose and capability vary substantially. Instead of facilitating a peer to peer electronic cash system, the Ethereum blockchain focuses are running programming code of any decentralized applications (Dapps). While all blockchains have the ability to process code, most are severely limited. Ethereum is different and allows developers to create whatever operations they want in smart contracts. Also, any current services that are centralized can be decentralized using Ethereum - like bank loans, voting systems, title registries, etc. This allows many essential services to significantly upgrade to be secure, corruption/hack proof, and with no downtime. Ethereum likely has the biggest role to play in cryptocurrencies shaping the future and people have speculated that the next version of the internet will be brought to us by Ethereum.

 

SiaCoin uses the blockchain as a decentralized storage platform. Today in cloud storage, a single company controls your data, and recently the trend has become for companies to abuse privacy rights of users in pursuit of higher profits. Users all over the world contribute disk storage from their computers to form a decentralized network. SiaCoins are used to rent storage from this network, and hosts are paid in coins for their hard drive space contributions. A combination of smart contracts, erasure coding, and encryption ensure secure, private, and reliable decentralized storage. The costs of hosting your data are a fraction of what AWS charges and speeds are faster. When big data meets blockchain expect to hear more of this blockchain technology.

 

Do you have any questions about cryptocurrencies?

What else would you like to know?



 

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