In this episode of Lancom TV, we sit down with one of our System Engineers, Daniel Tok (again!) to discus one of the latest, most disruptive technologies ever discovered - blockchain. Learn from the expert how blockchain is set to affect businesses in the not-so-distant future.
Transcript:
Hi, guys. Welcome back to Lancom TV. Hello, Daniel. How are you?
Hello. Good. Real good.
Thanks for coming back. It's the second time for Daniel, and we've brought Daniel here because apparently, he's an expert on something that's super complex, blockchain. So, Daniel is here today to simplify this whole blockchain thing for us, and I won't take too long. So we'll just crack into it. Daniel, what's blockchain, in simple terms, please?
So in simple layman terms, blockchain basically means it's a piece of a network where you put in data into blocks, and these blocks cannot be changed once they've been entered.
Right.
So, you can't edit it. You can't hack it. You can't do anything.
So essentially, once that's out there on the web, on this network, that's it.
Correct.
No changes.
You can't change it, but you can put updates in it to make changes but it always leaves a record.
Right. Oh, right. So I assume this is still fairly new from my readings. I think it was from early 2008, it first came out?
I think when bitcoin came out in '09, that's when they started the technology.
Right.
That was the first...that came out from it.
I see.
And it's evolved for the last, what, eight, nine, 10 years ago.
Yes.
So, it's changed quite a bit now. You can do lots of more stuff with it.
Which brings me to the second question. So, knowing what we know about blockchain now, how are the users of blockchain? Where is it being used at the moment, Daniel? You talked about bitcoin, obviously that's a key one, I suppose.
That's the key one that started everything. So, the stuff that people mostly use these days are Ethereum. So, Ethereum has an option of you being able to do smart contracts. With smart contracts, you can use it in your health care system. It can be done to do music. It's basically like a decentralized application you put on a network.
I see. Okay. And some games, possibly.
Oh, yeah. You can use it for games as well. So you've got ...
That's a whole new conversation.
That's a whole new conversation. We've got lots of different things.
Right. So, with that all said, Daniel, for us that are watching us today, for myself, I guess, people in business, the key question is, what does that mean for me? What does that mean for my business? So, is there any application of blockchain in businesses at the moment?
There are a few blockchain softwares that businesses use. A lot of it is actually closed source. The public stuff, it's mainly, like tokens for different software and so on and so forth.
I see.
But in terms of business use, it's powerful now because once it's in the block, it's locked in. Therefore, you have your transparency, and then it's very ...
Traceable, right?
It's traceable as well. So, I know from a business point of view, you get to see everything because you can't change it, right? And that you can see everything. You've got your trace-ability, and it's secure.
Yeah. So I'm assuming, from a financial standpoint, that finance and healthcare industry, which you mentioned before, will be taking more and more that piece of technology and try to use that.
Correct.
So we're not going to see blockchain going away anytime soon.
No, I highly doubt that. It should be quite a while before ... Yeah, we never know. This year will be interesting.
Technology is very interesting. Thank you so much for coming over today, Daniel. I hope that has helped you guys to learn a little bit about blockchain. I certainly am learning as well, so I find it really interesting. And I'm looking forward to continue to learn about it. So, appreciate your time. See you next time, guys. See ya.
See ya. Bye.