Blockchain and Bitcoin have sat in the background of my mind for awhile. I recently decided I want to dive in and learn a lot more on the subject. I grabbed Blockchain Revolution after seeing solid reviews on Amazon. It's a broad overview, covering design principles, possible future applications, and challenges. Its outlook is sunny, but it was a good dive into the affected industries, businesses, and people. I look forward to continuing my research.
Key Takeaways
Memorable Quotes
This book is broad and high level. It was a good place to start for me, but I still have a lot of questions, technical and otherwise. I look forward to diving into more details and understanding further.
Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin and blockchain have a wide range of potential applications.
- In internet terms, we're in 1990 with Blockchain and bitcoin. Nobody knows how things will change and develop in the next 10 years.
- Blockchain could disrupt any black box, aggregation of power, or collection of data.
- Democratization and disintermediation seem to be the two most important processes of blockchain.
- We can think of blockchain as a new system of transacting online. The designers and builders of this system imbue it with trust. I don't need to trust you to do business with you anymore, I just need to trust that the system works.
Memorable Quotes
- We believe that blockchain technology could be an important tool for protecting and preserving humanity and the rights of every human being, a means of communicating the truth, distributing prosperity, and—as the network rejects the fraudulent transactions—of rejecting those early cancerous cells from a society that can grow into the unthinkable.
- Creating a complete picture of a company financial health, by looking at periodic financial statements, is like turning a hamburger into a cow.
- Bitcoin or other digital currency isn’t saved in a file somewhere; it’s represented by transactions recorded in a blockchain—kind of like a global spreadsheet or ledger, which leverages the resources of a large peer-to-peer bitcoin network to verify and approve each bitcoin transaction.
- Online, we still can’t reliably establish one another’s identities or trust one another to transact and exchange money without validation from a third party like a bank or a government. These same intermediaries collect our data and invade our privacy for commercial gain and national security.
- Who is going to invest in a company that shows you what’s going on quarterly, compared to one that shows you what’s going on all the time?
- We have growing wealth creation and growing social inequality.
- Privacy is the foundation of free societies.
This book is broad and high level. It was a good place to start for me, but I still have a lot of questions, technical and otherwise. I look forward to diving into more details and understanding further.
