Somehow, somewhere, records need to be kept of transactions that are occurring by the nanosecond in the world of cryptocurrencies. And no one wants some central authority like a bank to do the record keeping. So the blockchain was invented by the clever Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 to serve as a public record of bitcoin transactions.
The main goal was to prevent double spending, where devious users tried to use the same bitcoins to make multiple purchases. The records arrive in the blockchain in the form of blocks that contain a timestamp and transaction data. And believe it or not, it is managed by a “peer-to-peer network” that validates new blocks of information. Once the block is recorded, no one can make any changes without the approval of a majority of the network.
It is now thought that this revolutionary technology could have many more applications, such as transferring medical records, voting, or proving one’s identity. The research firm Gartner predicts that the value of blockchain technology could reach over a trillion dollars in the next 10 years. Thank you kindly, Satoshi.