By
Bhushan Akolkar
August 29th, 2022
Balaji Srinivasan, the head of bitcoin startup 21 Inc, says blockchain technology set to alter industries gain consumers.
Bitcoin has definitely entered a significant stage in its development. Earlier this week its price went up to $250. One of the possible reasons can be recent publication of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) which tacitly authorized the use of Bitcoin. The CAC admits that it can no longer ignore the “revolutionary changes” Bitcoin and blockchain.
The publication especially highlights the potential of blockchain. “Blockchain provides a decentralized technology for various industries such as finance, including a way to establish information verification”.
Last week the world’s largest funded company in bitcoin, 21 Inc., applied for a patent for mining circuitry that “may be used to mine digital currency such as bitcoins,” with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The application for a mining circuitry patent shows that mining circuitry can be used to share profit or bitcoin rewards with other scheme members. Although the process of getting patent approval from USPTO can take years, it’s worth such a long wait.
Balaji Srinivasan, 21 Inc.’s CEO, predicts a great future to Bitcoin comparing its development with open-source software Linux – it isn’t well-known by consumers but serves as a basis for the Android mobile-operating system and some other key pieces of technology. “What happened is Linux won but by stealth. In the same way, I think that a lot of people are going to be using bitcoin without realizing they’re using bitcoin.”
Mr. Srinivasan says that although Bitcoin is basically seen as a payment method, the time will soon come to consider it a “protocol”. In this regard blockchain draws attention of the largest financial institutions. Bitcoin’s underlying technology is believed to be able to alter a great range of industries (including financial). Just as one of numerous examples, Arjan van Os who is Head of Innovation Centre at Amsterdam-based ABN AMRO, lauded the technology behind the digital currency in a new article, called “The Next Big Thing”. According to van Os, the blockchain has a number of important benefits, including high speed and low cost of transactions. “What the Internet has done for information and the way we communicate, the blockchain will do for value and the way we look at trust. The financial world is going to flip upside-down,” he wrote.
Balaji echoes that blockchain can be used to improve transparency and accountability in transactions, allowing a deeper level of financial auditing. “You can track every cent”, – he concludes. It can enable innovative way to pay for content currently supported by advertising.
21 Inc.’s CEO has also mentioned a whole new class of applications that can be created in the Internet as soon as bitcoin is built in devices and devices have the capacity to turn power into the digital currency.
