Technology And The Bitcoin Revolution

Cryptocurrency is a digital asset that serves as a medium of exchange with no central authority and was created to prevent the issue of double spending. This problem is solved with the use of blockchains where miners confirm transactions on a public ledger. As of today, there are over 1,000 different types of cryptocurrencies, and at least 600 of these have listed market caps of over $100,000. Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin are top cryptocurrencies trading today with their combined market cap topping $331B. Bitcoin, created in 2009, is the biggest cryptocurrency and has recently reached a net value of over $270 billion, with much of its growth being in the last few months. This has led to much

Consumers tend to be comfortable with virtual transactions and they also prefer payments using electronic systems to cash. There is an increase of accessing personal information to online platform (DeVries, 2016). However, the awareness of customer is likely to be a limiting factor for cryptocurrency to adapt into monetary market. According to Consumer Cryptocurrency Survey, there is only 6% of participants “very” familiar with cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin (PwC 's Financial Services Institute, 2015).

For lack of proper information and interests, many accountants, auditors, business executives are developing a sort of repugnance about Blockchain Technology, while certain prefer to simply ignore the question, because of uncertainties regarding future employment. As James Paine, founder of West Realty Advisors put it “One of the first things that people start to worry about when a disruptive new technology comes along is the possibility of it taking people's jobs away. With accountancy, blockchain is set to hugely impact everything from auditing and cybersecurity to the way that we store, access and interpret information ”. In the other hand, many professionals are welcoming this technological breakthrough because of the opportunities related

Blockchain technology has the potential to restructure large parts of the private investment fund and banking industry. Most legacy systems at private investment funds and banks are much more expensive than blockchain technologies, are subject to human error, and take much more time. Banks charged $1.7 trillion in processing fees in 2014. Because blockchain technology is transparent, verifiable, self-authenticating, and self-enforcing, financial transactions can be executed instantaneously at near zero transaction costs, increasing the efficiency for business and individuals exponentially. These factors in addition to blockchain technology’s disintermediation through technology driven democratized trust, precipitated the financial industry’s substantial investments into blockchain technologies in fear of becoming obsolete.

Wall Street is going gaga for blockchain. According to a recent report from the World Economic Forum (WEF), over $1.4 bn has been invested in blockchain technology in the past three years, with over 90 firms coalescing into rival groups. The motivation is clear. Distributed ledger technology, commonly known as blockchain, and the underlying idea behind crypto-currency bitcoin, promises to revolutionize the infrastructure of modern finance and investment.

Blockchain assures salvation for the financial sector through significant back workplace cost savings throughout an entire variety of activities. It's expected to be a wonder in the making that might bring back profitability to banks. Now if only someone could plainly describe to me how it operates in the real life rather than on a discussion deck.

The most famous cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), has surpassed a $5k USD market value on October 12th. People who boarded the bandwagon early are now rejoicing on their fruitful intuition. After several years of unfulfilled promises, the cryptocurrency market has shown huge growth in the past couple of months.

Currency acts as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account. Physical currencies are promissory notes payable to the bearer on demand. Digital currencies are internet-based form of currency. They represent both developments in payment systems and a new type of currency. Digital currencies, in hypothesis, serve as money, at present day they act as money to a small amount of individuals and institutions. It has been often questioned as whether the decentralised digital currency, such as Bitcoin and Litecoin, will emerge as the preferred method of payment for Internet Services or will remain a superficial payment method compared to well established existing payment systems.

First, if it's still an international concept for you, cryptocurrency is any of a number of digital money that can be made use of for online deals without intermediaries such as financial institutions. Without financial institutions, cryptocurrency can be traded and made use of for business between 2 or even more individuals without the oversight-- as well as expense-- of those intermediaries.

Blockchain is the now fastest growing technology promising its user anonymity on the web and integrity of their contents. Blochchain has evolved so fast that companies such as IBM, Microsoft and many other are intergrading the technology into the service their offered their customers. What are some of the use cases that blockchain can introduce to an already enhanced banking system that has been around for centuries one might ask themselves. For one the technology can improved the security of its client data and the manipulation of their assets. As of today the banking system in exclusive and only accessible to those societies with a high GDP. It is also usually the case that countries with low GDP also have lowest securities

Applicability of this process to organizations is challenged by the transaction speed, verification process, data limit, high starting cost and the necessary large processing power. Additionally, the regulatory status with governments is still uncertain. According to Gartner, Blockchain is at the peak of inflated expectation phase, closing in on the peak of the cycle. This suggests some of the expectation around the usefulness of this technology might not be feasible. Additionally, it shows that, it will take another 5-10 years for this technology to become mainstream.

Bitcoin has no value of its own contrary to what many argue. Its value is derived by the number of people adopting it and pouring their money into the BTC ecosystem. Investments by deep-pocketed investors like Winklevoss twins (estimated BTC stake around 11 million USD back in April), Chamath Palihapitiya, ex-Facebook executive and early employee, who has already dropped $5 million into BTCs and has plans to invest another $10 million are the reasons for skyrocketing price of bitcoins [3] [4]. Add to this, the publicity and trust in the system they are generating. Bitcoin's future potential was a hot topic this October at emTech, an MIT conference on emerging technologies [5]. Considering BTCs more as a start-up rather than a currency, its growth curve makes more sense but unlike a start-up it’s not generating any value itself but gaining people’s trust. And that’s what gives it value.

Litecoin – is the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of capitalization in the market today. It reached a market cap of $1 billion by the end of the year, 2013. The litecoin was primarily created as an improvement to the Bitcoin, the market leader. Among the added features are - mining capabilities with the use of an ordinary desktop computer, faster processing time (2.5 minutes versus 10 minutes for Bitcoin), and a maximum limit (84 million versus 21 million) which is four times more than Bitcoin, its leading rival.

To start off primarily, Bitcoin is a digital currency as opposed to physical currency that we’re accustomed to and use in our daily life. Straight off their site, Bitcoin is described as a pseudo-anonymous, P2P technology operating with no central authority or banks, it’s open-source, public, owned by no one and open for everybody to take part; but what does that all mean? “Bitcoin is the leader in a new generation of emerging currencies known as “cryptocurrencies” which aim to, among other things, facilitate the movement of money electronically while still maintaining a sense of privacy,” (Hobson)

Blockchain Technology supports a distributed ledger system and maintains a growing list of records that are confirmed by the participating people. In blockchain framework, each transaction is recorded in public ledger and stores the information of the transaction. In Current scenario, all the currency transactions between persons or entities are centralized and controlled by some other organizations (Interoperability team). Transferring money will needs bank and merchants who process the payments and they charge fee for each transaction. This is the common phenomenon in every domain and this complexity is simplified by Blockchain technology by creating decentralized environment where no interoperability team is required to control the