Maersk, Walmart & others already applying blockchain technology to everyday use

[QuestionAuthority]

I hope you realize this has nothing to do with bitcoin at all and will not benefit bitcoin whatsoever.

This is yet another example of a company proving they don't need bitcoin because they can just copy the technology. I would be concerned if I had a stake in Lightning Network. Eventually banks will just create their own LN based on a blockchain they control. No one needs to stake costly transactions on a blockchain that's maintained and developed by unpaid volunteers.

[Yakamoto]

Honestly, this is actually a really cool idea. I'm interested in seeing some of the technical details, but the system that it sounds like they have set-up is absolutely ingenious for a starting application of a new technology like the blockchain.

It's incredibly simple, too. I was expecting for it to be more complex but by the sounds of it they're actually using a simple, yet effective means of cataloging their inventory movements. Not something I would have imagined when people talked about Maersk using blockchain technology.

[Elder III]

Maybe if i use this information regarding things more relevant to Joe Public my friends and family members will understand that I'm not crazy when i try to explain the concept of crypto currency. 

Interesting use of blockchain tech, and it makes sense that it would be something IBM and M$oft would be all over right now.

[Hydrogen]

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.

There's a theory that says David Kleiman was Satoshi.

Its a good theory & maybe there's a good possibility David Kleiman(deceased) was Satoshi.

That's the only reason I brought it up. 

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.

https://seebitcoin.com/2016/05/everything-makes-sense-if-david-kleiman-was-satoshi-nakamoto-heres-why/

[Junko]

Good to hear more and more companies and people utilizing the blockchain technology for significant uses other than just currency. Just like when the internet and personal computing was in their early stages, there will be uses and innovations pertaining to bitcoin and the blockchain in the not so distant future that no one has even thought about yet. And just like how we now take the many amazing things that we can do with the internet and computers for granted, we will do the same with bitcoin and the blockchain in time as the technology and its use becomes more and more ubiquitous.

[Hydrogen]

Looks like there is more detailed and in depth information released on this topic at the #bizofblockchain event.



No clue what that is, who is involved or even who the twitter account who mentioned it is.

Sounds supa cool though.  

[LFC_Bitcoin]

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?

[QuestionAuthority]

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?

I've been saying for years that the best of Bitcoin will be co-opted by big business/government and Bitcoin will be the forgotten founder of all the new technology that's being used around the world.

Do you remember the Xerox Alto? It was the first computer to use the desktop metaphor and mouse-driven graphical user interface. Have you ever heard of Microsoft Windows? They stole the ideas of every great GUI designer from the Apple Lisa to Geoworks Ensemble and they won the game. Bitcoin will end up the same and just a sidebar to all of the big business money pouring into "blockchain technology". 

[agatha818]

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

[MintCondition]

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

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.

[dinofelis]

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?

My guess is that bitcoin and block chain are only slightly related.  The problem bitcoin wanted to solve, was solved using technology that used a block chain.  But bitcoin's problem needed also other things for the problem it wanted to solve, that has nothing to do with block chain (and my personal opinion is that block chains were not the best choice for the problem that bitcoin wanted to solve, but that is something else).

Bitcoin needed, amongst other things, an "append-only" list.  That can be implemented with a block chain.

But what is a block chain ?  It is nothing else but a linked list, where the linking pointers are hashes instead of simple "memory pointers".  Want to know a more sophisticated structure ?  A Merkle tree.  A Merkle tree is a pointer structure that gives rise to a tree, but with the pointers also replaced by hashes.  Any data structure that you can build with pointers (old C-style data structures), you can invent a crypto version where the pointers are replaced by hashes.

Unidirectional linked list -> block chain  (used to be called a hash list) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_list
Binary tree structure -> Merkle tree
More general tree structure (no loops) -> byteball's structure
General graph -> ? don't know the name

If you can do it with pointers, you can invent a structure with hashes which is the crypto version.

Merkle trees are more sophisticated than block chains, and exist since 1979.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree

Of course, to "secure" such a structure, the root needs to be cryptographically secured, with PoW, a digital signature of a trusted authority or other methods that indicate that you are dealing with the RIGHT structure.  The essential difference between a "block chain" and a hash list, is that the hash list is "fixed", while the block chain is "growing".  But a growing block chain is nothing else but successive hash lists that contain one another...

[QuestionAuthority]

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.

 https://www.atlantic.net/blog/overview-of-distributed-database-types-and-security/

I think the only reason anyone sees this as a positive for Bitcoin is that they really don't understand Bitcoin, blockchain technology or the reasons to use either.

[dinofelis]

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.

There is a difference between "distributed" (a matter of *location*) and "decentralized" (a matter of non-trusted reciprocal administration).

Distributed databases are still under the authority of a central command and administration hierarchy.  Decentralized databases must take into account bad actors/peers over which there is no hierarchical control.

By far most corporate applications have no need for decentralized systems, which bring in a huge overhead and security head aches, but go for distributed systems.  This is why bitcoin's block chain tech is not really suited for corporate applications.  You'd think that different branches in a corporation, under the same hierarchical command, don't need the trustlessness of decentralized systems, and hence, shouldn't cope with the unnecessary overhead such things bring in.

[bitbunnny]

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

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.

Implementing the blockchain technology doesn't mean that they would support or implement Bitcoins, there should be a clear line. They just want to use this successful decentralized database for their business. Banks are also very interested in implementing blockchain technology but that doesn't influence Bitcoin in any way or does something for its promotion.

[bitcoinisbest]

Very good news and this technology is the future and slowly and steadily many companies will be using this technology due ti its obvious advantages. Many banks in our country also trying this technology and seeing how it can benefit the banking process in coming time.

[deisik]

~snipped~

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.

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

It is not clear how they actually use the blockchain technology

And how it is different from any other DBMS in existence out there. I guess the most interesting part here is how it works in a decentralized way, and that part seems to be intentionally left untold. For example, it would be interesting to know the details about how entries in this blockchain get confirmed by the network participants and based on which data specifically. Namely, how do they know if the entry to be confirmed is valid and reflects the real situation? If this is not done in a decentralized way, then this not the blockchain technology

[Xester]

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.

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.

[deisik]

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

I'm doubtful if it was ever possible

Indeed, patent laws are different between countries, but in most countries (say, in the US) you can't patent ideas or algorithms, though you can patent specific implementations of these. In this way, I don't think that Satoshi could patent what we understand as the blockchain technology, though he could still be able to patent Bitcoin as an implementation of this technology. Obviously, that would mean nothing to whoever might be interested in blockchain since they wouldn't be interested in Bitcoin as such