Walk into any boardroom in 2018, and there’s a good chance you’ll hear a conversation about blockchain. Not everyone, however, may be clear about what it means. Blockchain is a digital ledger in which transactions made in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency are recorded. Exchanges between two users belonging to the same network are stored in a secure, verifiable, and permanent way, inside cryptographic blocks. Those blocks are connected in a hierarchical manner to one another in an endless chain of data blocks (hence the name). The technology is doing much more than powering the popularity of cryptocurrencies, however. It’s also behind Walmart’s plans to improve food safety, Barclays’ efforts to combat identity theft, and Maersk’s aim to make global trade more efficient. “No other architecture offers such a radical alternative to how things work today,” Sandra Upson, senior editor at WIRED, wrote in May. “Once blockchain technologies mature, they will recede into the background to become one of the fundamental systems powering the internet.”
Blockchain could change everything: the way businesses manage supply chains, the way governments count votes, and the way hospitals handle patient records. As the technology transforms society, what will it do to the events industry? Read the full article here.