We've all seen the movies and read the sci-fi books about machines and robots taking over the world. But how close are we to that becoming a reality? Smart contracts are becoming more and more commonplace in our society. Will they replace lawyers, accountants, and other officials completely or is this still just a fantasy?
Dr. Scott Stornetta is one of the two founding fathers of the blockchain concept. With his working partner, Dr. Stuart Haber, he developed the idea in 1991, describing it in peer-reviewed journals, and taking out a number of patents. When Satoshi Nakomoto wrote his famous Bitcoin white paper, he referenced Drs Haber and Stornetta.
It is becoming increasingly common to be able to sell Bitcoin from the same places that allow the cryptocurrency’s purchase. The main exception is currently Bitcoin ATMs, some of these allow you to sell Bitcoin but not all. If you wish to locate one, it is possible to do so using Coinatmradar.
You may have been toying with the idea of investing in cryptocurrencies but maybe have been a little in the dark as to what they're ll about. You will undoubtedly have heard of Bitcoin and Ethereum. It's important to recognise that advocates of such cryptocurrencies, or virtual currencies if you like, strongly believe that they have the potential to become so dominant in the future that they will even substitute the Dollar, the Euro, the Pound and so on, becoming the currency of choice globally.
You will need somewhere safe to store Bitcoin, before you go about buying any. This storage space is known as a ‘wallet’. It doesn’t actually hold the Bitcoins in it, but instead, it stores the private key that is required to access the bitcoin address – also known as your public key. Depending on which wallet method you decide to use, it may look like the bitcoins are actually in it which makes using them more straightforward. Wallets can hold more than one key, and usually hold many, and you are not limited to having just one wallet – indeed it is common to own several. There are a variety of wallet types that we will take a look at here.
Blockchain, at its core, is designed for the distribution of information. Wikipedia is a good example to use for comparison when tackling the subject of ‘what is blockchain technology’. At a glance, the two systems have much in common like the fact that they are both published by many people. No one person is tasked with the role of distributing information on Wikipedia. The same goes for blockchain – a group of individuals is allowed to post entries into the ledger.
