How Bitcoin and its underlying technology is changing financial servicesBitcoin witnessed a great Diwali this year! One of the biggest news hitting headlines across the world was the surging price of bitcoin. Bitcoin market cap touched $6 billion on November 4 when the its price broke the $400 mark for the first time this year. In late October 2015, European Court of Justice, Europe’s highest law court decided to exempt bitcoin transactions from Value Added Tax (VAT). This landmark ruling was seen as a great milestone for bitcoin and generated lot of positive sentiment amongst Bitcoin enthusiasts. Adding fuel to the positive sentiments, a recent survey report by Magister Advisors (a London based M&A advisory firm) claims that bitcoin is expected to become the 6th largest global reserve currency by 2030!
It has barely been 7 years since the legendary Satoshi Nakamoto published his ground breaking paper on a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. The paper provided a framework for online transactions without the need for trusted intermediaries (financial institutions). The framework makes innovative use of existing cryptographic techniques and game theory concepts to implement a proof-of-work based financial incentives to process online transactions over a decentralized peer to peer network. Every transaction would leave a public record trail in a distributed ledger while protecting the identities of transacting parties. Eliminating third party mediation would greatly decrease transaction processing cost thereby enabling online micro transactions. It would also eliminate payment uncertainties for merchants (e.g. chargebacks) through non-reversible transactions. We do not know who Nakamoto is. We do not even know if Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym of an individual or a group of researchers. However, one thing is clear: The document has triggered a flood of innovations that can impact our lives in ways its creator may not have imagined!
http://www.financialexpress.com/article/blogs/how-bitcoin-and-its-underlying-technology-is-changing-financial-services/175527/
