![]() Swan also envisions that physical properties registered on the blockchain could become "smart matter" embedded with sensors, QR codes, NFC tags, iBeacons, and the like. ![]() The owner can sell it simply by transferring the private key to another party. In other words, property rights can be cryptographically defined and self-enforced by code. ![]() "Smart property," for example, refers to physical property whose ownership is registered in the blockchain and thus controlled by whoever has the private key. Swan acknowledges that this technology is not yet mature, but her survey of some of the exciting new tools that are being explored and exploited by developers will give readers a good idea of its potential. The result is, in Swan's words, "a new paradigm for organizing activity with less friction and more efficiency." By cutting out the gigantic layers of government and corporate rules and bureaucracies devoted to tracking and authenticating identities, contracts, transfers of money, exchanges of tangible and intangible goods, and the ownership of property, blockchain technology can dramatically reduce the transaction costs of all sorts of activities. Since it is a decentralized public ledger, the blockchain enables the trustless transfer and accurate recording of all transactions and documents. Swan persuasively contends that the advent of the blockchain platform as "a universal, permanent, continuous, consensus-driven, publicly auditable, redundant, record-keeping repository" is a technological game-changer as significant as the creation of the Internet. The blockchain doesn't have to be confined to tracking Bitcoin activity. Bitcoins are exchanged for products or services when someone encrypts a message that essentially says, "I give the right to spend this money to the person who owns the private key corresponding to this address." The blockchain then publicly records this activity. The encrypted message can be deciphered only by using the recipient's private key. ![]() A person's public key can be obtained and used by anyone to encrypt messages intended for that individual. But blockchain technology is much more than Bitcoin, as the technologist and entrepreneur Melanie Swan demonstrates in her new book, Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy.īitcoin participants begin by creating a digital wallet that generates their Bitcoin address and their public and private keys. The blockchain is a decentralized public ledger of all the Bitcoin transactions that have ever been executed. ![]()
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