Authors:

  • Karim R. Lakhani

Excerpt

The Truth About Blockchain. Karim Lakhani, January/February 2017, Paper, "The technology at the heart of bitcoin and other virtual currencies, blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically. With blockchain, this article can imagine a world in which contracts are embedded in digital code and stored in transparent, shared databases, where they are protected from deletion, tampering, and revision. In this world every agreement, every process, every task, and every payment would have a digital record and signature that could be identified, validated, stored, and shared. This is the immense potential of blockchain. Although this article shares the enthusiasm for its potential, it worries about the hype." Link