Blockchain technology has gained so much momentum over the last few years, earning enough buzz that mainstream pundits are claiming that 2017 will be a major year for the platform. But just as many misconceptions came with the rise of smartphones and the internet, the myths surrounding blockchain technology are worth debunking. As the co-founder and CMO of Factom, a blockchain-as-as-service company, and author of Blockchain For Dummies, I’ve seen this firsthand and think it’s important to set the record straight.
So, what are blockchains? For the technical crowd, blockchains are strings of cryptographic proofs chained together and audited in a public network by nodes. For the rest of us, it’s essentially a chain of cards put into a card catalog (like from an old-school public library) — a permanent one that is publicly audited for unauthorized changes at regular intervals. Each “block” of records within any given blockchain is tied to the previous one in a “chain,” creating links that establish permanence. With a publicly accessible ledger, there is no central authority overseeing authenticity and security. The network itself acts as the judge and jury and guards itself against internal and external attacks.
Those are the basics. Now let’s deep-dive a little more into myths and facts about blockchains.
SatoshiPay is a company that processes nanopayment transactions usually in the form of bitcoins (or smaller Bitcoin units called, “satoshis”). The company is currently developing a two-way payment platform that will allow content providers to charge consumers a small fee (as low as one satoshi or a fraction of a cent) to read, watch, or listen to content. In September 2015, the company received seed funding from British entrepreneur Jim Mellon’s investment firm, Kuala Innovations.
Blue Star Capital PLC (LON:BLU), the investing company with a focus on technology and its applications within media and gaming, confirmed on 31st January 2017 that it had completed its investment in SatoshiPay.
