Could the Bitcoin Block Chain Improve Political Finance?
It was recently a headline that Political Action Committees had been raising funds before any candidates had announced their candidacy. It seems obvious that these groups have agendas that they're going to push, without regard for who is running for office. Whichever candidate they can bend the most to their will, that is the candidate they're going to support the most. That much should be obvious whenever examining the contributions to any political campaign. Even the very populist candidates like Bernie Sanders, rest assured, they have large interests such as unions behind them. In an....
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It's been said time and time again that the technology behind bitcoin, particularly the block chain, can go far beyond its use as a currency. One such use: voting. A report from website Version2 indicates that the Liberal Alliance in Denmark (a political party) will soon use the block chain for internal voting in Hvidovre, a suburb of Copenhagen. According to a translation provided by Reddit user 'Dymix', "It will happen at the next general assembly, later today." The cunning aspect of the technology, is that it is incredibly hard to change the existing content, since every new datablock....
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....
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 global financial industry continues to study the block chain with increasing vigor. The SWIFT Institute, a La Hulpe, Belgium-based financial research organization, is seeking proposals for a pair of research grants on block chain capabilities. Each 15,000 EUR grant is for block chain research, one in securities and the other in intraday liquidity. Proposals must be submitted by Aug. 7. In each case, the institute will pay half of the 15,000 euros immediately and the balance on acceptance of a working paper. The institute will publish each working paper to the global financial industry....