Slide 1: Cover Slide
What is Blockchain technology? What is Bitcoin? How does it work and how can it be used?
Slide 2: The History of Blockchain Part 1
A short history of Bitcoin.
- 2008: The first description of Bitcoin was published in 2008 by an individual or a group under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” in a now very famous white paper.
- 2009: The Bitcoin Network goes live and the first Bitcoins are mined.
- 2010: The first cryptocurrency stock exchange for trading Bitcoin is launched.
- 2011: One Bitcoin equals one USD.
Slide 3: The History of Blockchain Part 2
- 2013: One Bitcoin now equals 100 USD.
- 2014: Microsoft starts accepting Bitcoin as payments.
- 2017: One Bitcoin equals 10'000 USD.
Slide 4: Bitcoin is not Blockchain
Bitcoin does not equal Blockchain.
- Bitcoin is a currency and a system that uses a blockchain as underlying datastructure, which can be used for many things, including cryptocurrencies.
- Blockchain is the underlying data structure.
Slide 5: What is a Blockchain?
What is a blockchain?
- A blockchain is a datastructure, which is a growing list of data blocks.
- The data blocks are linked together, such that old blocks cannot be removed or altered.
Slide 6: Bitcoin Ecosystem Part 1
- The Bitcoin ecosystem contains a public network in which anyone, including a malicious participant, can participate without restriction. The amazing breakthrough that came with Bitcoin is that although malicious participants can participate, the system works without a regulator.
Slide 7: Bitcoin Ecosystem Part 2
The Bitcoin ecosystem is self-stabilizing. The more participants the system has, the more difficult manipulations become. And the more difficult manipulations become and the more participants there are, the greater the demand for Bitcoins. This results in a price increase, which in turn attracts new participants.
Slide 8: Cutting the Middleman
Blockchain technology makes middlemen (so-called trusted third parties) obsolete in many applications. Bitcoin can serve as an example here. Bitcoins are not routed via a central instance, e.g. a bank, but can be transferred directly between the parties.
Slide 9: Building Consensus
Blockchain technology has a wide range of applications for consensus building. In a finite timeframe, all participants of the blockchain agree on a proposal, which was worked out by a benign participant. At Bitcoin, for example, all participants agree on who owns how many bitcoins. But many applications are also conceivable in industry.
Slide 10: Creating Witnesses
Finally, a public blockchain can also be used for the automated creation of witnesses. If something is published on a public blockchain, all participants become witnesses. This is used, for example, by OriginStamp to create a secure timestamp for documents.
Slide 11: Key Features
A public blockchain has some characteristic features:
- Write-only, immutable, transparent data storage.
- Decentralized, no need for intermediaries.
- Consistent state across all participants.
- Resistant against malicious participants.
- Open to everyone.
Slide 12: Challenges
Although Blockchain technology has a strong disruptive power and can change many areas of our daily lives, there are still some challenges that need to be addressed.
- The high energy consumption - Bitcoin uses a lot of energy.
- The scalablity issue - Bitcoin supports far less transactions per second than e.g. VISA.
- It opens up possibilities for money laundering - Some blockchains as Monero are anonymous.
- The question remains as to how far we want to bypass the middleman. Often he can also protect us, e.g. a bank can protact us to the extend that we do not transfer the money to the wrong person.
