Bitcoin did for money, what I believe BitShares will do for business. In the very near future, we will see the status quo of business operations transform into a decentralized and trustless environment that functions more efficiently and fairly than any of the world's preceding models.
Hi, my name is Safvan. A cryptocurrency Investor and Evangelist. I created this series to give you a base-level understanding of how this new system will function and how you can make it work for you.
Welcome to BitShares 101. Chapter 1, Introduction. Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous Inventor of Bitcoin, created a piece of technology that many, including myself, view as the most important invention since the Internet.
That crucial piece of technology is called the blockchain. Bitcoin is built on blockchain technology. The blockchain created a method to arrive at a reliable consensus in a decentralized way.
It was the first technology to ever accomplish this feat. Before the creation of the blockchain, it was necessary to use third parties like Visa, Paypal or banks to record payment between parties.
Both parties to the transaction agreed that the records kept by the third-party should be considered evidence of payment. In other words, there was a consensus that a payment took place because the third party said so. Just like the blockchain began a revolution in payments through Bitcoin, I believe the blockchain is about to begin a revolution in many other areas as well.
For example, if I sell my Amazon stock to a buyer, right now we rely on a stock exchange like NASDAQ to record that transaction, but in the very near future we could rely on the blockchain to do that. If I purchase a piece of real estate from someone, the sale is recorded at some government office, but we could rely on the blockchain to record that transaction.
If I buy the domain BitShares.tv, currently that purchase is recorded at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). But it could be recorded on the blockchain. If we enter into a contract we might record that on paper and each keep a copy; instead it can be recorded on the blockchain. For example, let's say that I'm an Author and I want to write a book. I have to take a year off work to write that book and I need the money to do that. I could pre-sell ownership rights in that book via a Crowdsale, recorded on the blockchain. And then, all of my "shareholders" could receive revenues from the sale of that book once it is published.
The terms of their shares can all be recorded automatically and executed on the blockchain. Because of the laws, regulations and costs associated with an I.P.O. on the NASDAQ, it is too inefficient to justify issuing traditional stocks on a book that I was going to write.
But with blockchain technology, this suddenly becomes possible. It's similar to Crowdsourcing, but with greater protection and transparency for the investors. In this book, we're going to examine this exciting new world and find out where the most potential lies. In my opinion, at the center of all of this potential is BitShares. BitShares is a powerful open-source business engine built on blockchain technology. The Developers of BitShares have made a number innovations to the blockchain technology as used by Bitcoin.
These innovations solve many of the problems that blockchain-based enterprises will face when entering many of the aforementioned industries. All of these new industry disruptors built on blockchain technology will need to be traded somewhere, just like Apple and Amazon stocks are traded on the NASDAQ. So the BitShares team went ahead and built a blockchain based trading floor to be the NASDAQ for all future blockchain based solutions.
As you will learn in the remainder of this series, this decentralized trading floor has the potential to radically transform a wide range of industries. From the $700 Trillion dollar derivatives market, to how we manage loyalty programs like frequent flyer miles.
The efficiencies that BitShares' blockchain can bring to the world in the next decade are mind-blowing.
