Recently noted Bitcoin developer and commentator, Peter Todd , interviewed Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of ethereum . Their conversation ran the gamut, but some of the most interesting ground they covered were the public and private applications of blockchain tech.
As Todd put it, 2016 is shaping up to be the “year of enterprise” for blockchain technology. Large raises for companies that have both the motivation and connectivity to actual make it happen. Massive consultancies, banks, and houses of finance are asking more questions and starting trial runs . While much has been discussed lately regarding blockchain within the context of Bitcoin, ethereum is up to some pretty wild innovation as well. The opinion of Vitalik Buterin should not be taken lightly.
Buterin set up a couple fo categories that he felt were pretty interesting. Within private applications he underlined: financial clearing/ settlements
IoT (providing ledgers of existence/ cross-device communication)
Slock uses
With the financial clearing/ settlements piece, the conversation was pretty linear and centered around the typical targets for the technology which included blockchains as an ownership database, smart contracts for complex financial instruments like options and derivatives, and keeping track of collateral. All pretty standard and, ostensibly, the “beach head” for groups like Digital Assets Holdings . Buterin notes that one of the benefits of these types of private chains is that they are “1oo times more scalable at the current state of technology.” He also states that even if single banks or small consortiums simply use these systems to create a relatively small platform to trade assets, it is worth it if the end game is ultimately just users.
Although Buterin and Todd just glaze over the IoT aspects of the blockchain utilization, I definitely suggest that our readership inspects this point more closely. IBM has been doing […]
