What Block Chain Analysis Tells Us About Bitcoin
In this piece, CoinDesk contributor Tim Swanson takes a look at the latest block chain data in an attempt to draw new conclusions about how bitcoins are being spent, why they're being held and what this may mean for the burgeoning market. John Ratcliff is a principal engineer at NVIDIA who has a unique hobby, using 3-D tools to visualize block chain analytics. Over the past several months he has created visual aids for the community, in part to help show trends and highlight uncertainty. For instance, below is a pie chart of UTXO (unspent transaction outputs), better known as bitcoins and....
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Bitcoin was designed to be a decentralized and trustless payment network - with the power to do this provided by the block chain and its ability to publicly confirm the digital currency's digital transactions. Rather contentiously, however, as the bitcoin economy expands, more and more transactions are being carried out off the block chain. Such transactions are tracked on private databases instead of the block chain, and cannot be publicly tracked. There are pros and cons to both systems. So, which are better? Off-block chain or on-block chain transactions? Visible payments. Legitimate....
A Block Parser reads the Bitcoin block chain. There is no encryption of the data stored in the block chain. Bitcoin is a pseudonymous system. Meaning, ECDSA key pairs are used to abstract the identity of users. However, the binary data in the block chain can be read. The block chain is a transaction database. Every full node participating in the Bitcoin network has the same copy. The Bitcoin protocol dictates its structure and is the means through which each node maintains a duplicate copy. Overall, the block chain is just a data structure for storing blocks. The block chain stores blocks....
The adoption of block chain technology will revolutionize capital markets as early as next year, according to a report by TABB research carried by CNBC TV. The report noted that the adoption is not a matter of if, but when. The TABB Group is a New York City-based company that provides insight on securities and investment management. The block chain, the report noted, serves as a big, decentralized ledger that records transaction information and stores it on a global network that can't be tampered with. It noted that R3, a fintech company, leads a 20-bank consortium that is developing a....
Bitcoin will be the sixth largest global reserve currency by 2030, according to research by Silicon Valley investment firm Magister Advisors, which surveyed some 30 block chain companies, the International Business Times reported. The research also indicates banks will invest $1 billion in block chain technology in the next few years and that the block chain will become the rails on which finance runs. Block chain is "without question" the most important enterprise IT development in a decade, said Jeremy Millar, a partner in the investment firm. He characterized the block chain as being on....
Why are so many financial institutions investing in block chain innovation labs? Will the block chain, with its promise of rapid, secure and inexpensive transactions, really make many existing financial institutions obsolete as some have claimed? Thomas F. Dapp and Alexander Karollus examined the block chain's impact on traditional financial institutions in a "talking point" article for Deutsche Bank Research, which provides macroeconomic analysis for Deutsche Bank Group. The article is titled, "Blockchain - attack is probably the best form of defence." The authors noted that the block....