So a cryptocurrency is just a currency that operates without any central point
of control, like a government or a central bank.
That means there's no central entity determining
who owns what and who's allowed to participate in the currency.
Who’s allowed an account, or any other aspect of how the currency operates.
Blockchain is a process for reaching agreement in a context
where there is no centralised point of control.
So, in the context of cryptocurrencies,
you use a blockchain in order to determine like who owns what.
If you're operating a currency, then you have to determine certain things.
In particular,
you have to determine how many coins does Andy own, how many coins does Bob own and so on.
And everybody has to reach an agreement to those facts.
So you need some sort of protocol for reaching agreement in a context
where there isn't any sort of central point of control such as a government.
Who can just declare, Andy owns this and Bob owns that.
The thing that attracts people, the reason people see it as being important
is this fundamental idea of decentralisation.
So the suggestion is
that there are context in which decentralisation is important.
Some people would argue that it's important
in the context of currencies and certainly other people would argue
it’s important in many other contexts, for example, the World Wide Web.
So the World Wide Web today is very centralised.
It's because it's controlled by,
a small set of large, very powerful companies.
And a suggestion is it'd be better to run that
run the web with a more decentralised architecture.
And you have to look at that situation and say,
is it healthy that there's, you know,
maybe five guys in California who essentially could decide
who's allowed to say what and when, The future is hard to predict.
I think the basic message I'd say the technology is not
a bottleneck here it’s certainly possible to,
to build cryptocurrencies that could process, you know,
a hundred thousand transactions a second or more.
I think probably the biggest questions around it is regulatory issues.
If you look in in the US, there are certainly some bodies
that are taking quite an aggressive stance in regards to regulation.
And so there's definitely a danger that a lot of the innovation
here is going to be killed off.
If you look at the UK now, maybe things are a little bit healthier,
but I think we'll just have to wait and see what happens.