The blockchain – a decentralized digital transactions ledger – sounds boring next to the trendy products grabbing the attention and wallets of the crowdfunding folks.
You may be more familiar with its high intrigue sub-theme as the platform for cryptocurrencies, led by Bitcoin, aiming to disintermediate the global monetary system. The real thriller for investors is the duller accounting function. This super secure digital database is about to change how we conduct our digital lives, including our banking, investing, insurance, and most other online transactions.
If it were not for the crowdfunding community the blockchain would not be ready to turn us all into more active netizens. Crowdfunders have sunk more money into blockchain technology than any other sector. The blockchain sector has also helped crowdfunding enter the private investment mainstream. Crowdfunding is now the largest private equity asset class, representing 21 percent of all equity investments in the UK in 2016, according to Beauhurts Deal 2016 report.
Here is our guide to the crowdfunded blockchain technologies ready to transform your digital life in 2017.
What exactly is the blockchain?
But first, the short history of the blockchain and why crowdfunders so zealously back it. It’s a story of a new age crypto-currency maker who meets the father of modern cryptography and invents a secure digital future. The new technologist is Vitali Buterin, a developer of blockchain technology and a cryptocurrency called ether, which has raised around $18 million in crowdfunding. Buterin incubated his ideas at the Canada’s University of Waterloo – incidentally, not far from the world class Perimeter Institute where real world physicists including Nobel laureate Stephen Hawking study the effect of a different kind of either on galactic stars.
