I'm sure you've heard all sorts of comments on the newest fad, Bitcoin, whether it's considered "the best revolutionary technology of the century" or "the newest fraud outbreak", but do you really understand what is backing Bitcoin besides mass amounts of investors? The answer is blockchain technology; let me explain why.

A blockchain is a secure ledger database that shares as well as stores all transactions between parties, throughout a network of computers. The fact that we can trust sending information back and forth, this successfully eliminates the need for third-party payment processors, thus eliminating fees. This means that the community throughout the network comes together, providing their computer power to, in return, fulfill transactions which allows the network to process freely without delays.

What is a Blockchain?

A blockchain is designed to transfer information without any parties able to scale through this information; it is completely anonymous and all shared information, is not viewable whatsoever, providing assurance that no information provided can be altered in any way. In fact, Bitcoin "miners" are completely unaware to anything being sent. This gives surety that no third-party is necessary, which makes the blockchain an essential public ledger by promising it's anonymity for EVERYONE.

Understand that although Bitcoin runs on blockchain technology, they are not the same thing. Bitcoin may be the first, and most successful commercial brand to implement blockchain, but they sure are not the only ones that can put use to this technology. Blockchain will change the way users store data whether it's for business use for personal; I see blockchain as a great asset for the cloud storage community. This technology can be used in so many ways and later in my future blogs, I will continue to explain why I think blockchain provides incredible benefits for the cloud storage community.