(Newswire.net — June 2, 2017) — Whether you’ve read about it on the internet, used it to purchase the frothiest coffee in New York, or traded it for a second-hand Tesla car, there’s a good chance you have at least some experience with Satoshi Nakamoto’s landmark cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. It’s an unlikely success story, subverting just about everything we know about economics, and giving rise to a nearly endless (736 and counting) stream of copycats, in the form of other new cryptocurrencies.
Immutability
Bitcoin also gave the world’s innovators something else to play with – blockchain, a type of decentralized database that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are built upon. Blockchain is a ledger that orders records in such a way that they cannot be changed unless all computers on the network agree to it; in that, it’s virtually immune to tampering and data theft, making it an essential consideration for any industry with information worth protecting.
Many of the benefits of working with a blockchain-based currency like Bitcoin were listed in a recent article about Bitcoin and its future on the website of iGaming company BitCasino, which cited enhanced security, lower transaction fees, and worldwide acceptance as the impetus behind the company’s decision to abandon dollars and pounds altogether and use Bitcoin exclusively. The site compares Bitcoin to Apple Pay in terms of its potential uses in retail.
Smart Contracts
Outside of Bitcoin, one of the more notable uses of blockchain technology is Ethereum, something that’s “sort of but not really” like the original cryptocurrency, to borrow some of the internet’s wisdom – the two are different applications of the same thing. To put it briefly though, Ethereum is a way for software developers to create apps and execute “smart contracts”, pieces of computer code that respond to particular inputs in certain ways, in real time.
Source: Pexels
For example, in the case of EthLance, a platform that organizes work for freelancers, the smart contract handles the exchange of work for cryptocurrency; in this case, Ether. Similarly, Alice.Si is an Ethereum program that forces charities to work for donors’ money, meaning that evidence of good work is a prerequisite of getting paid. It’s a system based on reciprocation; you have to put something in to get something out.
A World Computer
Obviously, it’s possible to make just about any coding language do the above, so what makes Ethereum special? Integration with the blockchain means that any application running on the platform exists in a vacuum: it’s not possible to stop, break, or otherwise interfere with it. Developers aren’t tied to components either, as processing power and RAM is provided by Ethereum’s decentralized virtual machine.
Next to Bitcoin, Ethereum is arguably the most important blockchain-based organization on the planet, and the value of its value token is suitably high, at $231.67 per coin as of early June. That’s nothing compared to the $2,435.76 of Bitcoin but Ethereum may just be getting started; after correctly predicting a $100 price at the beginning of May, analysts are now tipping Ethereum to overtake Bitcoin for value in the next few years.
It’s hard to say just how Ethereum will progress in the future but the added value its software platform offers to investors means that there are more than enough incentives to get involved with the cryptocurrency.