The interesting thing about Bitcoin is since its inception, no one’s cracked it. Yet it’s completely in the open.

Blockchain, or Bitcoin, to be specific, survived not because it had not been attacked. Indeed, it had been attacked 24/7 since day one.

In order to understand how secure a blockchain could be, we shall look into the technical and system design part of it, namely Asymmetric Cryptography and Distributed System.

Once you have the basic idea of how things are being construct, you shall have more confident on the security part of it.

Blockchain is Military Grade Security

Bitcoin survived not because it had not been hacked. It is being hacked 24/7 since day 1, and it survives. This is not saying that it won’t be hacked in the future, such as the quantum computing possibilities certain parties are working with. The point is, if a system with its source code widely available to the public can survive for the past 9 years, it is needless to say how strong it is, by design.

Let’s use the centralized banking system software system to illustrate the scenario. Imagine a big bank’s computing system source code is made public. That is a major disaster. Theoretically, when people gain access to any system’s source code, the system is doomed. That was before the born of Bitcoin, or the first Blockchain.

Bitcoin is a collection of concepts and technologies that form the basis of a digital money ecosystem. ~ Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Mastering Bitcoin, 2015

The system is construct in such a way that there are some economics working in the background.

Distributed System

In a centralized system, the point of attack is obvious. You can’t attack effectively when you don’t have a clear target. In other words, in a distributed system’s environment, hackers can’t just hack a computer and consider job done.

They will have to hack every single node or computer in the network, almost at the same time, or in a very limited time frame, in order to make changes to the same piece of information.

Image below clearly illustrates the differences between centralized and distributed system.

In a distributed environment, no central company or person owns a system, yet everyone can use it and help running it. There is no single point of failure.

If you would like to read through a more detailed explanation, check out the free sample chapter from the book Blockchain Insider.

You may want to check out Bitcoin’s coding related info at https://github.com/bitcoin, or related documents at https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-documentation.

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Despite its mysterious beginnings, the blockchain may be the airplane of our time.

Economist and filmmaker Manuel Stagars portrays this exciting technology in interviews with software developers, cryptologists, researchers, entrepreneurs, consultants, VCs, authors, politicians, and futurists from the United States, Canada, Switzerland, the UK, and Australia.

The documentary is divided into 7 sections:

1. First Contact With The Blockchain
2. Blockchain Technology
3. Influence of the Blockchain
4. New Business Opportunities
5. The Blockchain and Banks
6. The Blockchain and Financial Inclusion
7. The Real Revolution
8. The Blockchain and Us

Blockchain and Us by Manuel Stagars

Notes on Blockchain and Us

Roger Wattenhofer
Professor, Distributed Computing Group, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
Zurich, Switzerland

“For me, part of the fascination is that we don’t yet know exactly what this thing is, and yet there are still lots of people getting around it. I thought of it as it’s like a space rock that crashed on Earth. You have a bunch of people that gather around and all pointing to it, what this thing is? You don’t really know what it is but it is still very interesting.”
Taylor Gerring
Co-Founder, Ethereum
Zug, Switzerland

Blockchains are military grade cryptography.

“We are really seeing a new way of transacting value on the internet.”
Elizabeth Stark
Co-Founder & CEO, Lightning
San Francisco, USA

What matters to people is what they can do with the technology.

“I think within 20 years, financial services will be just software and the smart contract technology, in particular, is going to automate a lot of things that institutions and people handle today.”
Caitlin Long
Chairman of the Board & President at Symbiont.io
New York, USA

“”When they saw the whole opportunity, they are ready to change, hey I don’t understand everything but I understand there’s something behind, so we really need to go forward.”
Jan Seffinga
Partner, Deloitte Switzerland
Zurich, Switzerland

What prosperity offers you, is independent.

“We are at the cross road here. We have the graviton now to create the technology that will actually help the entire human race. The question is, will we do it? But we can do it now.”
Rik Willard
Founder & Managing Director, Agentic Group
New York, USA

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