Bitcoin Forum

What links flowers, mandarin oranges, and pineapples? They’re all neatly recorded on Maersk’s new digital shipping ledger.

Moving millions of gigantic metal boxes around the world is hard work—but circumnavigating the associated paperwork can be even harder. So the world’s largest shipping company has been trialing how it can make use of the digital technology behind the world’s most notorious cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, to make it a little easier.

Bitcoin is built on what's called the blockchain: a digital ledger where each line is recorded based on the previous one using cryptographic techniques, making it almost impossible to modify at a later date. The ledger isn’t stored centrally, and multiple parties can agree by consensus that the details contained within it are accurate—which means that it's in everyone's interest to keep it so. That makes it perfect for recording financial transactions, but also doing plenty else, too.

The shipping company Maersk has now announced that it has been working with IBM to use the blockchain to keep track of shipments as they’re hauled across the seas. This isn’t the company keeping track of the metal boxes themselves, but rather their contents. The company claims that a single container being hauled from East Africa to Europe might require paperwork to be dealt with by as many as 30 different people, spread across 200 or more interactions.

So with IBM it’s built a tool based on blockchain that allows every participant in a supply chain to see the progress of a shipment, including where the container is and the status of its documents. The hope: shippers reduce the weight of paperwork that needs to be done, while customs officials and clients can see where goods are at all times. So far, shipments of flowers from Kenya, mandarin oranges from California, and pineapples from Colombia have all been tracked using the tool as they flowed into the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Maersk isn’t alone in using the blockchain to keep track of stuff. As the New York Times points out in a long piece describing IBM’s foray into blockchain, Big Blue is working with 400 different organizations to apply the technology to different situations. That includes Wal-Mart, which announced last year that it was using blockchain to record and log the origins of produce in order to improve health and safety standards.

IBM is clearly looking to assert its control as a blockchain force to be reckoned with, but others will snap at its heels. Microsoft is already working on the technology, and its open nature means that it’s already being used by smaller upstarts to do everything from build cryptocurrencies for the world of corporate finance to make a more private Internet. One thing is clear: there's certainly more to blockchain than Bitcoin.

[IBM ]Big Blue is working with 400 different organizations to apply the technology to different situations

Wow! I love this blockchain adoption for real life!
I think there is also another news:

Have to believe Satoshi is dead. If he were still alive he would have patented blockchain technology a long time ago.

The blockchain is a technology for all. No patent no copyright it's a technology for humanity.

We are all Satoshi

Satoshi could patent blockchain if he chose to do so.

Then those who use it would pay him licensing fees.

I like this as evidence blockchain is useful for things other than currency & has other applications.

You do know that bitcoins are open source right? That's the opposite of patenting something. Go patent the internet you flippin hurpadurp. This thread is a waste of precious computing power.

So anyone can explain me the advantages over like lets say a mysql database?

Else i would just say: lol what?

You do know that bitcoins are open source right? That's the opposite of patenting something. Go patent the internet you flippin hurpadurp. This thread is a waste of precious computing power.

There are many uses of blockchain technology and we are glad that some big transportation and shipping companies are utilizing this technology. Satoshi really has a great invention that is shared to humanity tat can be apply and adopted on any businesses.

No SQL injections, less downtime, could eliminate login/password/authentication steps for users, more tamper proof/secure than backend databases, no licensing fees like there might be if they used oracle or some other enterprisey backend software, the code could be more compact, scaleable and portable than SQL and using a blockchain could eliminate the need for firewalls, VPN, SSH, HTTPS and other standard security practices that would be used with a backend db.

This is off the top of my head, there are probably many reasons for using a blockchain over SQL I'm missing.

For blockchain to be released under an open source license, it would need to be explicitly stated by Satoshi and other original bitcoin developers.

No one knows who Satoshi is. *Hint, hint*

This is why banks and others have tried to patent blockchain technology in the past.

I like blockchain for being free and open source but on the other hand there is a saying which always bugs me while i'm using free stuff:

"If you're not paying for the product, you are the product."

Means, if you don't pay for the stuff you are using, you still pay in some other way but you feel good because you don't realize.  8)

Looks like blockchain technology is already being utilized in applications other than currency.
Have to believe Satoshi is dead.  :(  If he were still alive he would have patented blockchain technology a long time ago.  :-\
Also, who would have guessed blockchain could be utilized in this way? Very interesting!

Satoshi could patent blockchain if he chose to do so.

Then those who use it would pay him licensing fees.

I like this as evidence blockchain is useful for things other than currency & has other applications.

There have being a list of patents filed for blockchain and hope you know who is behind all those filed patents,it is none other than Craig Steven Wright and block chain is the invention of the century which could ease many things and brings legitimacy and transparency and can decrease the cost of operation.

Everything makes sense if David Kleiman was Satoshi Nakamoto. Here’s why

There is so much about Craig Wright’s claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto that does not add up.

It all started back in December when he was ‘outed’. The problem is all the evidence back then pointed to an elaborate fraud, orchestrated by Wright himself.

Why would Craig Wright want people to believe he is Satoshi Nakamoto? Well, he’s under investigation from the Australian Tax authorities who gave his company a $54m tax refund for spending on R&D, spending it looks possible was never was actually spent, since the manufacturer denied ever selling the supercomputer this research was supposed to be carried out on. If he could persuade them he was Satoshi Nakamoto it would certainly help him convince them of his legitimacy, and make it easier to attract additional investment. The motive here is obvious.

David Kleiman was an expert in Computer security. He was paralyzed from the chest down after a motorcycle accident in 1995 and became a reclusive computer forensics obsessive. In late 2010 he was hospitalised where he would remain until discharging himself a few months before his death from MRSA complications in April 2013. He died broke and in squalor.

In December 2015, following the ‘leaked’ documents, Gizomodo ran with the headline “This Australian Says He and His Dead Friend Invented Bitcoin”, and Wired said:

Another leaked email from Wright to computer forensics analyst David Kleiman, a close friend and confidant, just before bitcoin’s January 2009 launch discusses a paper they’d been working on together.
From the leaked documents, it seems the tone was that Kleiman and Wright worked on Bitcoin together.

Fast forward to the BBC interview and Wright says that while there were others involved, he [Wright] “was the main part of it”.

If the leak was the result of a genuine hack on Wright, then the documents that were leaked should be considered more accurate than anything Wright is saying now, since everything he is saying now he will be shaped to serve his own self interest.

If the leak was made by Wright, as seems likely, perhaps the change of tone reflects a change in strategy. Maybe ‘sharing’ credit for somebody else’s work feels more acceptable, but you get to a certain point where you’ve sunk so deep into the deceit and you might as well go all the way.

It gets even more interesting, according to the Gizmodo article Wright made contact with some of Kleiman’s business partners in February 2014 to inform them they’d been working on a project together and that Kleiman had mined an enormous amount of Bitcoins, and he requested they check his old computers for wallet files.

Kleiman’s business partner, Patrick Paige, called to ask for more information and was told by Wright that Kleiman was the creator of Bitcoin, before he later backpedaled and said Bitcoin was invented by a group of people which included Kleiman.

At around this same time, on Feb 12th 2014, Kleiman’s then 92 year old father commented on a Techcrunch article about Bitcoin with the message “Please send information pertaining to David Kleiman’s participation in the development of Bitcoin”. Perhaps this was related to something Kleiman had told his father while still alive, or details of Wright’s phone call being passed on by Paige.

There is good reason to believe Kleiman and Wright knew each other well. Wright posted an emotional tribute to Kleiman on YouTube (since removed) upon learning of his death. It is entirely possible that Wright was a trusted friend and confidante of Kleiman’s, and this might have given him access to information that ‘only Satoshi could have known’ that would have been useful when Craig Wright convinced Gavin Andresen of his legitimacy.

What does not make any sense, if Wright is Satoshi, is for him to create a trust to prevent himself being able to access his own Bitcoins until 2020 – and leave this in the trust of a man in Florida.

Such a trust is detailed in the December 2015 leak and includes bizarre stipulations including that if Wright dies, all the Bitcoins would transfer to his wife, minus a deduction to show the “lies and fraud perpetrated by Adam Westwood of the Australian Tax Office against Dr Wright”. It would be interesting to know when the Australian Tax Office began their investigation. The trust is dated 9th June 2011, and values 1.1 million Bitcoins at $100,000 at a time when their actual value was closer to $30 million. The document is just odd and full of inconsistencies.

What seems more likely is that Kleiman possessed the Bitcoins, and Wright is trying to create a retrospective paper trail to enable him to make a legal claim for ownership of them in the event they ever become accessible. Perhaps Kleiman had made provisions that would enable his family to recover his Bitcoins at some future point in the event of his death, and that he had disclosed details of this to Wright.

Everything makes a lot more sense if David Kleiman was Satoshi Nakamoto and confided in Craig Wright. It explains why Wright would possess enough information to convince some people of his authenticity, but has been unable to provide any verifiable proof that he has access to any of Satoshi’s private keys. Craig Wright has gone to an extraordinary level of effort to convince people he is Satoshi Nakamoto. Given that 1.1 million Bitcoins are currently worth around $500m – it’s not hard to imagine why.

If Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto he could easily verify it cryptographically. The fact he has gone to such lengths without providing this proof suggests he simply doesn’t have it. What’s most likely to happen next? Well, if he’s been involved in Bitcoin since the early days he probably has some early coins – so he’ll probably move them as ‘proof’. Not early enough to be linked to Satoshi, but early enough for him to claim they are and make the circus drag on a little longer.

I believe the fact that he has gone to such lengths to link himself to 1.1 million Bitcoins held by Kleiman suggests he genuinely believes David Kleiman possessed that number of Bitcoins, and that he has a chance of being able to claim them for himself. This adds support to the idea that Kleiman, and possibly the also deceased Hal Finney, really were Satoshi Nakamoto.

It is also notable that Kleiman was hospitalised in late 2010. Gavin Andresen became lead developer of Bitcoin in December 2010 and Satoshi then disappeared.

Whatever is happening is fascinating, it’s a plot worthy of Hollywood. Sadly, this is the real world, and I can’t help but feel sadness for the family of David Kleiman who are possibly about to encounter tremendous invasions of their privacy as a consequence of Craig Wright’s actions.

Keiman was a security expert who practised what he preached. All his data was no doubt encrypted and any evidence of his being Satoshi likely died with him. It is possible this mystery will never be solved.

It is also possible that David Kleiman had nothing to do with Bitcoin at all.

I just know that if he was Satoshi, he seemed a modest man who died a pauper while likely sitting on a trove of millions and avoiding the abundance of recognition he deserved. Craig Wright on the other hand is an egotist who fakes having PhDs and drags out a bizarre media circus to reveal himself as Satoshi without providing simple evidence.

Not going to lie, it annoys me when I see multiple news articles about huge organisations thinking about using blockchain tech.

Why is bitcoin not mentioned in the same story very much?

Wow! maersk is a large shipping company! i am a blockchain enthusiast very pleased to know that the company is applying blockchain technology.

Not going to lie, it annoys me when I see multiple news articles about huge organisations thinking about using blockchain tech.

Why is bitcoin not mentioned in the same story very much?

Blockchain technology is nothing more than a new type of distributed database. Oracle, IBM and many others have been trying for decades to come up with a truly secure distributed database. Most companies settle for a centralized database for security reasons even though a distributed one would be more efficient.

Maerk and Walmart made a good decision,it is so nice to know that they were already concurring the bitcoin world, it will help us more knowing that big companies were into bitcoin now,means more investment and will have good market to keep bitcoin standing and growing,soon more companies will catch up in bitcoin.

Also, who would have guessed blockchain could be utilized in this way? Very interesting!

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603791/the-worlds-largest-shipping-company-trials-blockchain-to-track-cargo/

Looks like blockchain technology is already being utilized in applications other than currency.

Have to believe Satoshi is dead.  :(  If he were still alive he would have patented blockchain technology a long time ago.  :-\

Also, who would have guessed blockchain could be utilized in this way? Very interesting!

That is one false move by Satoshi since he viewed bitcoin and blockchain as one package and so he did not place a patent to it for bitcoin to be fully decentralized. But if he has patented blockchain then the alternative coins will not exist since he has the patent then if that happens bitcoin will be the only cryptoccurency out there and will see bitcoin reaching 1 million dollar in value