Blockchain Travel Apps

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and blockchain technology could have many useful and novel applications in the travel industry, for both individuals and business travelers, and also host destinations that are interested in attracting visitors.

1. Money - The first and most obvious blockchain travel application is money, taking advantage of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies for digital payments. Foreign currency exchange is an expensive hassle, and it could be much easier to pay with Bitcoin directly from a smartphone, when possible. If it is not possible to pay with Bitcoin, another crypto money application is obtaining local currency through worldwide Bitcoin ATMs or converting money from Bitcoin to local currency through a crypto exchange. Loyalty programs could be another crypto application, where blockchains could track point-garnering activity as it occurs, possibly denominated in crypto token that could be easily fungible and readily convertible to awards.

2. Passport - Another crypto travel application is storing important documents on the blockchain such as passports, visas, permits, identification cards, and driver’s licenses. One benefit is that documents presented in person could be confirmed with an Internet look-up of their blockchain-registered version. Another benefit is having easily-accessible back-up copies in the event of loss. Other new ideas expand the traditional notion of identity, for example beyond nation state citizenship, world citizenship (projects proposed by Bitnation and Chris Ellis) and Estonia’s e-Residency program. Beyond identity documents, it could also be helpful to have immunization records and EMRs (electronic medical records) accessible by blockchain.  

3. Reservations - Managing all of the many details of travel - flight, accommodation, transportation, and tour reservations – can require a lot of coordination that might be managed seamlessly by a Travel DAC (distributed autonomous corporation). This blockchain-based package of smart contracts could track, orchestrate, and update changes in travel details and keep travelers on top of their schedules. This would be like having a more extensive version of TripIt (multiple travel reservations in one application including automated status-updating) with blockchain-based AI functionality. A Travel DAC for business travelers could feature expense-tracking and reimbursement. Other Travel DAC applications could include monitoring airline prices for optimal dates or routes, and suggesting vendors per user preferences, such as those that accept cryptocurrency (for example LaZooz as opposed to Uber, or decentralized alternatives to Airbnb).  

4. Insurance and Provenance - Travel insurance could be selected through decentralized peer-to-peer based alternatives to traditional insurance that might be cheaper and offer more certainty in the case of claims payout dates and amounts. Blockchain-based peer-to-peer dispute resolution mechanisms also might be employed to adjudicate travel claims. Another application when purchasing an item for example, could be validating the item’s provenance (origin) through a quick blockchain look-up using item-tracking functionality from Provenance (or in industrial use cases, SKU Chain).

5. Disaster - In special cases such as natural disasters, blockchain-based applications could be indispensable in coordinating and tracking aid donations and supplies to their end recipients. ‘Disaster chains’ could also be used to help in managing volunteers, facilitating rescue-tracking, and even possibly getting around the scalability issues of overly-taxed communications networks in the case of disasters (with lighter-weight communications messaging).

Satoshi Roundtable: Is Bitcoin Dead due to Scalability Issues?

Scalability was the most prominent issue discussed at the February 26-28, 2016 Satoshi Roundtable (the Bitcoin industry's annual technical meeting).

This is expected as scalability is an ongoing issue to be resolved for any cryptocurrency to achieve mainstream adoption.

Bitcoin as the most mature and liquid cryptocurrency is being pushed towards current limits which prompts urgency to attend to scalability and other issues.

Scalability is a hard problem, and needs to be resolved at some point if cryptocurrencies are to succeed, here with Bitcoin, or in future iterations of other cryptocurrencies.

There are different technical proposals for Bitcoin and it is not clear which might be best, or even if these are the right type of solutions.

However, it is also clear that we might not know without trying, so one or more solutions will need to be implemented.

One scalability design question for example is whether to knit together activity from large bodies of side chains, or have one monolithic processing architecture.

There could already be a split to industry-specific chains that implement different forms of scalability functionality.

A need for more robust prototyping environments and multiple core developer teams has been suggested, which could be good as cryptocurrencies are fundamentally new territory.

Whatever solutions arrive for Bitcoin may not be the final solutions for all cryptocurrencies and the bigger potential economic future of ubiquitous digital payments.

There are always a host of technical issues in the rapidly-evolving cryptocurrency space, and another concern is the reward structure for Bitcoin miners, which is due to change in July.

Compared to scalability, this is not as big of a concern impacting Bitcoin's overall viability as the mining market tends to resiliently resettle around different set points of miner demand, supply, and rewards.

Top 5 Immediate Money-Making Applications of Blockchain Technology

The right question is not whether Bitcoin is over or under-valued, or over or under-hyped, but what the biggest potential money-making applications might be. While we wait for consumer-ready cryptocurrency applications to be presented to us by the financial services industry and other trusted providers, in the progression of ATMs, online billpay, eStatements, and Apple Pay, there are many other opportunities to be explored.

Blockchains could be the last piece of core infrastructural technology needed to facilitate the machine learning revolution in the same progression as the industrial revolution, only quicker.

1. Banking 2.0: The first and most obvious application of blockchain technology is the opportunity to reinvent the banking and financial services industry. The current monetary system is far too slow - it takes days and weeks to transfer funds, where cryptocurrency transactions are received immediately anywhere in the world. Sending a payment to a software development team in India means people receiving money instantly, and at a fraction of the traditional transaction cost. This could mean a tremendous speed-up in the velocity of money, and a way to allow legacy banking systems to interoperate, reorganize themselves, and make the whole way they do business more efficient. 
2. Financial Markets. In financial markets, one clear application of blockchain technology is algorithmic trading and back office operations. High-frequency trading could be taken to the next level implemented in smart contract DACs (decentralized autonomous corporations) and executed by semiautonomous agents with the ability to act more quickly and better crawl information sources for price, news, and sentiment changes. Similarly, whole tiers of back-office operations like clearing currently handled by people-agents could be handled by blockchain-agents. The automation economy is well under way, and blockchains provide the final required checks-and-balances feature of accountability. Blockchains instantiate a robust technology record of all transactions in a universal ledger system that is available for future lookup on-demand at any moment. Financial services businesses like the mortgage industry could implement smart property via blockchains as a universal asset registry and transfer system, and smart contracts for payment automation, interest rate resets, and securitization packaging. 
3. RTB and BI Automation. In the same vein as smart contract-based algorithmic trading, blockchains are also well-suited for implementation in other automated high-frequency markets like real-time bidding for advertising and business intelligence. These are already heavily machine algorithm-based markets that could be easily facilitated by being instantiated in blockchains. Again there is quicker, better, more-trackable, more-efficient, permanent, universal worldwide execution, together with record-keeping, monitoring, and tracking. The RTB market is billions of dollars at present and estimated to grow to $42 billion in the next three years. Likewise automated business intelligence is big business, and big data, for example, domain name hosting services use machine learning algorithms to continuously obtain competitive data points for standard services such as the cost of 1-year hosting with 2 GB of storage.
4. Blockchain IOT and M2M. We think cryptocurrencies might make our human lives easier, and they do, but even more so, they are for the machine economy. Cryptocurrencies are the economic layer the web never had, and can facilitate not just remuneration, but also the communication, coordination, and tracking of all machine-to-machine and machine-to-human interactions. While two thirds of people are estimated to be online in five years (from the current one-third), 25 billion things are forecast to be online by 2020. A corresponding Internet-of-Money is needed to organize this Internet-of-People and Internet-of-Things, for example seamlessly facilitating a connected car’s progression from smarthome IOT network to smartcity highway to automated city center parking. IBM's Adept announcement at CES is an early example of the idea of smartnetwork IOT coordination using blockchain technology.
5. Blockchain Thinkers. Not only is blockchain technology a potential means of enacting Friendly AI, it is more broadly a new concept and tool for instantiating intelligent computing operations in a blockchain architecture. This could have implications for both the development of artificial intelligence and human cognitive enhancement. DeepMind's Neural Turning Machines as an external memory for machine learning algorithms is an example of this kind of instantiation structure in artificial intelligence. For cognitive enhancement too, a blockchain could be the tool that makes lifelogging useful, recording every thought as a transaction in a blockchain memory, for search and recovery later, for example in the cases of Alzheimer's disease and stroke rehabilitation. One implication of Blockchain Thinkers is Blockchain Advocates. Blockchain Advocates are blockchain-based smart contracts as a new form of independent third-party advocate that can act on your behalf in future time frames. Right now you can set up smart contracts to monitor your smarthome IOT network, for example pinging you if the security system goes offline. In the future, your smart contract advocates could confirm that your digital mindfile is still running and being backed up appropriately, doing future real-time oracle lookups. “You’re still running on the current standard, Windows 36” your smart contract butler informs you. (More information: Blockchain Thinkers: The Brain as a DAC and Cognitive Applications of Blockchain Technology).

Bitcoin and blockchain technology could be just the first application of decentralization as a new form of information technology. 

Overall, blockchains are a new class of decentralized information technology for the potential execution of any kind of administrative task more efficiently, from all applications of money and finance, to government to health. Blockchains are a global-scale coordination mechanism - quicker, more transparent, more participative, and more accessible. Blockchains are a supercomputer for reality in the sense that they are a management tool for any system that can be quantized or divided into discrete elements or constituent parts. Bitcoin as the current ‘legacy’ cryptocurrency with more entrenched network effect adoption than other cryptocurrencies might not be the final or enduring cryptocurrency. Likewise the blockchain architecture as currently instantiated with questionably expensive and wasteful proof-of-work mining operations might not be the final architecture. However, it is harder to argue that decentralization as a new concept and class of information technology is not here to stay given the liquidity and penetration reach of the Internet. Focusing on end-user applications could help Bitcoin shift from its nacency into a more mature phase of cryptocurrency industry development, becoming a value currency, not just a development currency or speculative currency.

More Information: Swan, M. (2015). Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy. O'Reilly Media.

Blockchains as a Granular Universal Transaction System

Blockchain technology is a new concept in large-scale coordination due to a number of key features. First, a blockchain is an open universal transaction system. Every transaction worldwide is processed the same way and posted and made available for viewing on the blockchain. The transaction ledger is publicly-inspectable on-demand at any future moment.

Second, blockchains are trustless in the sense of not having to find or trust any of the other parties in the transaction; it is just necessary to trust the system. This suggests that orders-of-magnitude more transactions may be possible in trustless systems since the architecture is a mechanism allowing anyone to transact with anyone anywhere; geographical proximity, personal knowledge, and the search problem are all reduced or resolved. This is conceptually a next step in the progression of how Amazon (a global system) opens up trading in a way that Craigslist (geographically-local) does not.

Third, blockchains are a universal tracking system that might be able to accommodate infinitely more granularity than has been feasible and cost-effective to monitor previously. The optimality of what level of transaction detail is best to post directly to the blockchain (thus invoking the expensive mining operation for their recording) is being sorted out in different ecosystem tiers. The overall blockchain ecosystem is developing to avoid bloating the blockchain with too many micro-transactions by making use of special-purpose sidechains, decentralized off-chain storage (for example with MaidSafe, batched transactions (like batched notary sidechains to register large groups of legal documents), and Merkle trees (confirming and storing a whole corpus of data with one meta-hash).

Blockchains are a Supercomputer for Reality, a Mechanism for Orchestrating Quanta

The key idea of blockchains as a universal transaction system is that they are an automated computational mode, a seamless universal infrastructural element for the coordinated activity of granularity. Blockchains could be a universal transaction system on an order never before imagined that could possibly be used to coordinate the whole of human and machine activity. In this sense, blockchain technology is a supercomputer for reality. Any and all phenomena that can be quantized (defined in discrete units or packages) can be denoted this way and encoded and transacted in an automated fashion on the blockchain. As big data seeks to perhaps eventually model and predict all phenomena, natural and otherwise, so too might blockchains accompany big data for the tracking and administration of all phenomena.

One summary and prognostication of this dynamic and the potential universal applicability of blockchains is that anything that can be decentralized will be. This has an implied assumption about the inherent efficiency, benefit, and potential superiority in certain situations of the blockchain model. Decentralization is ‘where water goes’ (where water flows naturally, along the path of least resistance and least effort). The blockchain is an Occam’s razor, a natural efficiency process.

Blockchains are thus an intriguing model for coordinating the full transactional load of any large-scale system, whether the whole of different forms of human activity (social systems) or any other system too like a brain. In a brain there are quadrillions of transactions that could perhaps be handled in the universal transactional system architecture of a blockchain, like with Blockchain Thinking models.

Further, it is not just the transaction-handling capability of the blockchain as a universal coordination system but other properties that can also be applied through-out such as demurrage incitory stimulation for dynamic resource redistribution across the system. In Blockchain Thinking, this could be redistributing brain currencies like ideas and potentiation. Thus, it is not the mere orchestration features of universal blockchain systems but their enhancement possibilities that is perhaps the more interesting point. Not only can we better organize larger-scale existing activity with blockchains, but we can also possibly open up new classes of as-yet unimagined functionality and potentiality.

More information: Swan, M. (2015). Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy. O'Reilly Media.

Blockchain Consensus Models Increase the Information Resolution of the Universe

There is ample opportunity to explore blockchains as a new form of information technology, including what consensus models as a core feature might mean and enable. A key question is “What is consensus-derived information?” that is, what are its properties and benefits vis-à-vis other kinds of information? Is consensus-derived information a different kind or form of information? One way of conceiving of reality and the universe is as information flows, where blockchain technology helps to delineate three distinct levels of information:

1. Level one: Dumb, unenhanced, unmodulated data
2. Level two: Socially-recommended data. These are data elements enriched by social network peer recommendation, which has been made possible by networked Internet models. The quality of the information is denser because it has been recommended by social peers. 
3. Level three: Blockchain consensus-validated data. Now a third level of data has been exposed, blockchain consensus-validated data, data’s highest yet recommendation level based on group consensus-supported accuracy and quality. Not just peer recommendations, but a formal structure of intelligent agent experts, have formed a consensus about the quality and accuracy of these data. Blockchain technology thus produces a consensus-derived third tier of information that is higher resolution in that it is more densely modulated with quality attributes, and simultaneously is more global, more egalitarian, and freer-flowing. The blockchain as an information technology provides high-resolution modulation regarding the quality, authenticity, and derivation of information.

Consensus data is thus data that comes with a crowd-voted confirmation of quality, a seal of approval, the vote of a populace standing behind the quality, accuracy, and truth value of the data, in its current incarnation effectuated by a seamless automated mining mechanism. The bigger questions are “What can a society do with this kind of quality of data?” or more realistically, “What can a society do with this kind of widespread mechanism for confirming data quality?”

Thinking of the benefits of consensus-derived information only helps to underline that blockchain technology might be precisely the kind of core infrastructural element, and scalable information authentication and validation mechanism, necessary to scale human progress and to expand into a global and eventually beyond-planetary society. Further, blockchains are a system of checks and balances that might help to effectuate not only friendly Blockchain AI, but also the transition to a future world of multipsecies intelligence. The speculative endgame vision is that the universe is information, where the vector of progress means transitioning toward higher-resolution information flows. Information may be conserved, but its density is not. Even beyond conceiving of blockchain technology as a core infrastructural element to scale the future of human progress, ultimately it might be a tool for increasing the information resolution of the universe.

Bitcoin and Science: DNA is the Original Decentralized System

What is the role (if any) of Bitcoin and blockchain technology with regard to the natural world and traditional science? One obvious link is using the blockchain as a means of improving distributed community computing projects with tracking and remuneration. BOINC, whose software runs SETI@home, has introduced Gridcoin, and [Protein]Folding@home has introduced Foldingcoin. In addition, these distributed community computing models could be extended using blockchain technology as a way to coordinate and offer supercomputing time to DIYscientists; opening up access to a scarce resource which was previously only available to professional researchers (Zennet). Other projects are investigating a way to harness otherwise wasted crypto-mining cycles (where the computing problem (computing a nonce) must be deliberately intensive, wasteful, and one-way), like Primecoin’s system (http://primecoin.io/, of requiring miners to find long chains of prime numbers instead of otherwise unusable hashes.

Sense-making Models: Religion, Science, Political-Economy, Information
There is a more fundamental link between the blockchain and science in the grand scope of our human models for making sense of the world: religion, science, political-economy, and now information. Information is an interesting paradigm by which we are starting to see the structure of the world and make sense of it, both in physical and digital reality. The blockchain is an information technology, and the Internet and the blockchain provide a heightened information climate; a means of improving and modulating the resolution of information through faster more-expedient transfer, discovery, deployment, and use.

Information as a Sense-making Paradigm Reconfigures Science
The reach of information as a sense-making paradigm can be seen in how this idea is reconfiguring approaches to science. One way is in the growth and pervasiveness of big data and data-intensive science. Nearly every field of traditional study now has a computational complement (computational biology, computational astronomy, computational philosophy, computational law, etc.). The scientific method is transformed from a narrow hypothesis-experimentation loop to dynamic hypothesis formation per large-data results, vastly scaling the degree of experimental activity.

DNA: The Original Decentralized System
Even more profoundly, information is changing how we think about problems in science. For example, the old thinking was that chemistry and molecular biology are the conditions for life, and this is true in the sense that they are the substrate, the hardware for life. But now life is being seen as an information problem. Biology is a software system that runs on the substrate of chemistry and molecular biology. Wetware biology is the language of information, a software system to signal, transcribe, transmit information, encode and decode information, and send secure messages; a lot like a blockchain system. Biology is perhaps the original decentralized system; every cell has the full instruction set, the organism’s entire DNA, like Bitcoind nodes have the full ledger of every transaction.

Blockchain AI: Consensus as the Mechanism to foster ‘Friendly’ AI

The blockchain is the decentralized public ledger upon which cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin run; the blockchain is possibly the next Internet; the blockchain is an information technology; the blockchain is a trustless network; the blockchain is an M2M/IOT payment network for the machine economy; and the blockchain is a consensus model at scale, the mechanism we have been waiting for that could help to usher in an era of friendly machine intelligence. The blockchain’s consensus mechanism could be instrumental in the connected world of Bitcoin which necessarily accommodates communication between humans and machines, and the possibility of increasingly autonomous machine actions and entities which could lead to artificial intelligence and a technological singularity (a moment when machine intelligence supersedes human intelligence).

Large Possibility Space for Intelligence
Speculatively looking towards the longer term, there may be a large possibility space of intelligence that includes humans, enhanced humans, different forms of human-machine hybrids, digital mind uploads, and different forms of artificial intelligence like simulated brains and advanced machine learning algorithms. These intelligences would likely not be operating in isolation, but would be connected to communications networks. To achieve their goals, digital intelligences will want to conduct certain transactions over the network, many of which could be managed by blockchain and other consensus mechanisms.

Only Friendly AIs are able to get their Transactions Executed
One of the real benefits of consensus models is that they could possibly enforce friendly AI, which is to say cooperative, moral players within a society. In decentralized trust networks, an agent’s reputation (where agents themselves remain pseudonymous) could be an important factor in whether its transactions could be executed, such that malicious players cannot get their transactions executed or recognized on the network. (It does not matter if malicious players masquerade as bonafide players since the reputation requirement and network incentives elicit good behavior from all players, malicious and bonafide alike). Some of the key smartnetwork operations that any digital intelligence may want executed are secure resource access, identity authentication and validation, and economic exchange. Effectively, any network transaction that an intelligent agent needs to fulfill their goals could require some form of access or authentication that is consensus-signed, and which cannot be obtained unless the agent has a good (benevolent) reputational standing in the smartnetwork. This is how Friendly AI could be effectuated in a blockchain consensus-based model.

The Blockchain Consensus-Recommended Data is a High-Resolution Information Technology
The blockchain is an information technology, a consensus-derived third tier of modulated, denser, freer-flowing information. Level one is dumb, unenhanced, unmodulated data; level two is socially-recommended data, data elements enriched by social network peer recommendation, and now, level three is blockchain consensus-recommended data, data’s highest-yet recommendation level per group consensus-supported accuracy and quality. Consensus data is data that comes with crowd-voted confirmation of quality, the vote of a populace standing behind the data quality, effectuated by a seamless automated nonce-mining mechanism. Possibly, the blockchain is precisely the kind of scalable information authentication and validation mechanism necessary to expand to a global and eventually beyond-planetary society. The blockchain as an information technology provides high-resolution modulation regarding the quality and authenticity of information.

Counterparty/Ethereum: Why Bitcoin topped $450 today (was under $350 last week)

In the heated development space for Bitcoin 2.0 protocol projects (Figure 1), on November 12, 2014, Counterparty announced that they ported the open-source Ethereum programming language onto their own platform. Ethereum is regarded as one of the most advanced Bitcoin 2.0 projects, a general-purpose Turing-complete cryptocurrency platform. Turing-complete in this sense means able to run any cryptocurrency protocol and any cryptocoin, essentially a universal crypto-platform (the platform wins, not any specific cryptocurrency). Now Counterparty can do this too, serve as a Turing-complete platform, and possibly in a better way than Ethereum since Counterparty is already running on the existing architecture, the Bitcoin blockchain (with 90% cryptocurrency market cap), the de facto standard, already-launched, worldwide, secure platform.

Figure 1: Sample List of Bitcoin 2.0 Protocol Projects. 

(Extended from work by Piotr Piaseki)

This is Good News for All Parties (not just Counterparty): Bitcoin 2.0 is Just Beginning 

This does not mean 'game-over' for Ethereum, or 'game-won' to Counterparty. It is a sign of the dynamism in the space and the rapid innovation that open-source software communities enable (both Ethereum and Counterparty's software is all open-source). Every different project is able to examine and work with the code of the other projects and bring in any and all implementations. It means that good ideas can take seed more rapidly, be improved through iteration, and allow space for the next good ideas. Ethereum and Counterparty both have deep visions for the whole future architecture of the blockchain, and establishing early 'plumbing' foundations can help everyone progress to the next levels. In the seething hive of Bitcoin innovation, these kinds of announcements would be expected to continue, both since the blockchain industry is in early stages of development, and especially due to the open-source code liquidity of the industry.

Smart Contracts

The great benefit is that now Counterparty may be able to quickly launch the ability to do smart contracts on their platform, since Ethereum is known for its intricate focus on smart contract functionality. Smart contracts is the capacity to do more elaborate transactions on the blockchain, moving beyond simple buy-sell currency arrangements to more sophisticated contracts such as a loan with ongoing payments and interest rate resets. However, even before the Ethereum port, Counterparty did have some degree of smart contract capability (certainly for the basic smart contracts that are not even yet widely-used), as does the Bitcoin blockchain itself, and other solutions like Colored Coins and Coinprism. Other Bitcoin 2.0 protocol projects such has Ripple have their own smart contract facility, Codius.

The key point is that the blockchain industry is currently building out the infrastructure, the enabling layers in a protocol stack, the plumbing of the new layers of the Internet. There is tremendous functionality fungibility across blockchain protocols and platforms. In the blockchain plumbing layer, it might be possible to do some degree of smart contracts and tokenized altcoin issuance and multi-sig wallets on all cryptoplatforms. The questions are therefore 1) which Bitcoin protocol 2.0 platforms will emerge as standard after the intense innovation and development phase, and 2) which platforms will prove to be the most secure and raid/theft-free, and 3) at the higher level, which will be the new value-added services (the Netscape, Amazon, and Uber of the future) built atop the Bitcoin protocol plumbing protocol layers.

Take-Away Message 

The important take-away message is that the Bitcoin 2.0 protocols space may only heat up with more announcements to be expected, and more projects forming, merging, dying, and cross-implementing. Also that there could continue to be substantial volatility in the price of Bitcoin. The Counterparty announcement should be seen as support for the overall blockchain industry and underlines the clear demand to move beyond Bitcoin 1.0 currency (even as this segment is still developing) to Bitcoin 2.0 contracts. This has always been part of the initial vision set forth by Satoshi Nakamoto:

"The [Bitcoin] design supports a tremendous variety of possible transaction types that I designed years ago. Escrow transactions, bonded contracts, third party arbitration, multi-party signature, etc. If Bitcoin catches on in a big way, these are things we’ll want to explore in the future, but they all had to be designed at the beginning to make sure they would be possible later." (Nakamoto). 

Reference: Nakamoto, S. (2010). Re: Transactions and Scripts: DUP HASH160 ... EQUALVERIFY CHECKSIG. Bitcointalk.

One model of understanding the modern world is through computing paradigms, with a new paradigm arising on the order of one per decade (Figure1). First, there were the mainframe and PC (personal computer) paradigms, and then the Internet revolutionized everything. Mobile and social networking has been the most recent paradigm. The current paradigm is that of the Connected World which includes Bitcoin/blockchain technology as the economic overlay to what is increasingly becoming a seamlessly connected world of multi-device computing that comprises wearable computing, Internet-of-Things (IOT) sensors, smartphones, tablets, laptops, Quantified Self-Tracking devices (i.e.; Fitbit), smarthome, smartcar, and smartcity. Bitcoin and the underlying blockchain technology could be the next major disruptive technology and worldwide computing paradigm, on the order of the Internet in terms of the potential for pervasively reconfiguring of all human activity as the Internet did. Blockchain technology could be deployed and adopted much more quickly too, given the network effect that so many humans worldwide are already linked through the Internet and cellular network technologies.

Figure 1. Disruptive Computing Paradigms.
(Extended from: You say you want a revolution?)
Mainframe, PC, Internet, Social-Mobile, Connected World.

Just as Paradigm 4 functionality (social-mobile (i.e.; mobile apps for everything and sociality as a website property (liking, commenting, friending, forum participation)) has become an expected feature of technology properties, so too could Paradigm 5 functionality. Paradigm 5 functionality could be the experience of a continuously-connected seamless physical-world multi-device computing layer, with a blockchain technology overlay for payments, and not just payments, but micropayments, decentralized exchange, token earning and spending, digital asset invocation and transfer, and smart contract issuance and execution; all as the economic layer the web never had. Apple Pay (Apple’s token-based app-based eWallet) could be the critical intermediary step in moving to a full-fledged cryptocurrency world where the blockchain becomes the seamless economic layer of the web. 

Bitcoin Newbie Series: How to Get and Spend Bitcoin

We aren't used to authority being a peer-to-peer responsibility as opposed to something imposed by a centralized institution. Authority floating freely has already happened in information - when information became decentralized with blogging and the restructuring of the media industry, and in entertainment, where individuals became their own taste-makers. In these cases individuals must examine content and think for themselves about its quality and validity. The bitcoin revolution is the same thing happening now with currency, economics, finance, and monetary policy. It might seem harder to let go of centralized authority in matters of government and economics as opposed to culture and information but we will mature into it (The number one 'still-not-getting-it' question with bitcoin - "But who is running it all?"). Ultimately we could have as many currencies as twitter handles and blogs, all of which may be fully useful and accepted in their own hyperlocal contexts. Blockchain technology is push (user pushes relevant information for this transaction only) not pull (credit card/bank info on file to be pulled anytime authorized). Financial intermediaries operating on blockchain technology (i.e.; Overstock) would not have information stores to have to protect that are inevitably hacked (i.e.; Target, Chase, etc.).

Terminology
The word bitcoin is confusing because it means three different things. Bitcoin is used to refer to 1) the underlying technology concept (more appropriately called the blockchain, a decentralized ledger that allows individuals to engage in transactions without having to rely on a trusted third-party intermediary), 2) the technology protocol for the implementation of blockchain technology (individuals engaging in peer-to-peer currency transactions via encrypted electronic wallets with miners recording these transactions in the blockchain ledger), and 3) the actual currency itself. It is as if when Paypal launched, they would have called the Internet Paypal, upon which the Paypal protocol was run to transfer funds, and the currency of these funds was Paypal. More precisely, these 3 uses of bitcoin should be delineated as:

1. The underlying blockchain technology (an information technology akin as a ‘class of thing’ to the Internet) 
2. The Bitcoin protocol that runs on the blockchain for the tracking and transfer of cryptocurrency funds
3. The Bitcoin currency (denoted as btc)

The blockchain is a record of where all the btc are, all the addresses they are associated with now, and this history over all time. It is continually updated, every 10 minutes, a new block (a new page is placed in the record book) with all the latest transactions.

Bitcoin is a digital currency. This means that you do not have physical custody of your btc, they are not in your physical possession, they are not on your computer or mobile wallet; they live on the Internet and are associated with addresses (like an email address but too complicated to store in mind). Per your address and encryption key (stored in the digital wallet on your mobile phone or computer), you have the authority to move your btc around and transact them. 'Stolen bitcoin' is a matter of having insecure storage and sharing of passwords and private keys.

How to get Bitcoin? (after step 1, get yourself a digital wallet mobile app like BlockchainInfo or Mycelium) 

• (Easiest) Receive bitcoin as a gift or payment from someone else
• Buy bitcoin locally through bitcoin meetups or Satoshi Square trading events
• Exchange USD or other traditional currency for bitcoin without giving out your personal identifying information: Circle 
• Exchange USD for bitcoin where you do specify your personal details at one of the exchanges/markets like Coinbase 
• Buy bitcoin locally from an individual via LocalBitcoins or (coming) OpenBazaar 
• Gift yourself bitcoin with giftcards: use Gyft, Purse.io, Brawker, or Amazon giftcards 

Where to spend Bitcoin?

• Local Vendors in your City: AirBitz business directory app, Coinmap.org 
• Online airline tickets: CheapAir, Expedia
• Online merchants: general list; Overstock, New Egg, Dell

What is the Bitcoin Exchange Rate? 

• Bitcoin Average  (weighted average across exchanges, good in periods of volatility)
• Coinbase
• Bitstamp 
• Volatility Shielding (pre-futures) 
• Bitreserve 
• Coinapult

How to accept Bitcoin if you are a merchant (save on merchant processing fees, welcome bitcoin customers):

• General list of integration plugins
• BitPay
• Shopify
• PayStand (unified payment solution)
• WooCommerce (WordPress plugin description)   
• Micropayments (example: reading online content); bitcoin paywall
• Bitwall
• Coinlock

Intro Presentation: Beginner Bitcoin Workshop
Advanced Presentation: Blockchain: The Information Technology of the Future

Blockchain Health - Remunerative Health Data Commons & HealthCoin RFPs

The bigger concept behind cryptocurrencies like bitcoin is blockchain technology. The blockchain (a chain of transaction blocks) is a public transaction ledger, automatically downloaded and stored digitally in electronic wallet applications; a digital record of all transactions in a certain asset class like bitcoin. There can be different kinds of blockchains (ledgers) for recording and tracking different kinds of assets. Blockchain health is the idea of using blockchain technology for health-related applications.

At least four principal blockchain health ideas have been articulated so far:

• Blockchain Personal Health Record Storage – Personal health records would be stored and administered via blockchain like a vast electronic EMR system. Taking advantage of the pseudonymous (e.g.; coded to a digital address not a name) nature of blockchain technology, personal health records would be encoded as digital assets and put on the blockchain just like other assets like currency (bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin, etc.). Users would permission doctors and other parties into their records as needed via their private key. In addition to creating vast repositories of medical health data records, the blockchain could also be a mechanism for quantified self data commons to amass and analyze data for preventive medicine purposes.

• Blockchain Health Research Commons - Health research could be conducted by aggregating personal health records stored on the blockchain. Users may feel more comfortable contributing their personal health data to a public data commons like a blockchain 1) in an encrypted pseudonymous form, and 2) for some amount of remuneration via bitcoin, or different kinds of healthcoin (which could denominate HSA dollars and be spent back into health services). The benefit of storing health data on the blockchain is that it can be analyzed but remain private. DNA.bits is a startup in the blockchain health research space.

• Blockchain Health Document Confirmation Services - Confirming that certain kinds of health information exist like proof-of-insurance, test results, prescriptions, status, condition, treatment, and physician referrals are just a few examples of health document-related services often required. The ‘notary function’ is a standard application envisioned for blockchain technology. This is the digital encoding of all manner of important documents (driver’s license, identity card, passport, home/auto titles, auto insurance, etc.) to the blockchain, which can be verified in seconds with encryption technology as opposed to hours and days with traditional manual technology.

• Doctor Vendor RFP Services – doctors and health practices could bid to supply medical services needed by patient-consumers. Like Uber drivers bid for driver assignments with consumers, doctor practices could bid for hip replacements and other needed health services, at minimum bringing some degree of price transparency and improved efficiency to the health sector. Further, this bidding could be automated via tradenets. 

More Information: 
The Institute for Blockchain Studies
Presentation (summary) and slides:  Blockchain: The Information Technology of the Future

Enterprise Bitcoin and the Brain as a CryptoCurrency Network

If Dell, New Egg, and TigerDirect now accept Bitcoin, and Paypal's CEO contemplates the same, eBay and Amazon might also accept Bitcoin in the not too distant future, and this would start to really push cryptocurrency into the mainstream. Faster still if Google Wallet were to join. Bitcoin seems to be 'going enterprise' (= key step to mainstream) as fast as the Internet-of-things (Enterprise IOT: Microsoft, Ernst & Young, etc. offering connected POS (point of sale) networks and all 'devices' as an IOT service to businesses). However, even though Bitcoin in its entirety is a radically new concept, from a vendor standpoint, accepting Bitcoin is not a big deal - it is analogous to accepting any other kind of payment mechanism. Anyone (individual or enterprise) receiving, or wanting to pay out in Bitcoin can easily convert national currencies via Coinbase, bitpay, or other sites, or now the purported (as of July 2014) 33 worldwide Robocoin Bitcoin ATMs. Conceptually, Bitcoin is a payment mechanism for vendors, but for money businesses like banks, it is much more critical to develop explicit Bitcoin strategies and policies.

However, there is still much risk in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin as a currency is still new and volatile, and it is not clear if it is a faddish or persistent transformation, although the concept may have considerable resiliency even if specific cryptocurrencies do not (i.e.; Baconcoin). Also, there is only about $8 billion USD in Bitcoin now, and it would need to be on the order of $50-100 billion USD to receive more serious financial consideration. The currency does have a number of important features that could propel acceptance including architecture (psuedo-anonymous and trustless), openness, low-cost (eliminates currency exchange costs), and fungible worldwide availability. As Kevin Kelly points out, Bitcoin is not just a payment mechanism, it is a revolutionary way to enable collaboration at an unprecedented scale. Bitcoin is the reinvention of the institution of capital. Further, in the automation economy, Bitcoin is automated and open accounting; a transparent ledger. The concept of Bitcoin and its architecture and operation is a new model which is not unlike the brain, where (at minimum) many functions are handled automatically, and there is a certain modular aspect to function. Bitcoin might be a universal mathematical model of nature that human intelligence is just now discovering.