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What I learned about Blockchain, Marketing Attribution, and Computer Science in a few days.
I didn’t publish a post last night since I had a bunch going on. I just finished Altima Solution’s Week 3, Class 1 on Value Proposition. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been back in one of these classes, but I’ve learned a lot. I also spent plenty of time yesterday learning about blockchain, attribution marketing, and computer science. Fun update: per my friend Ani’s advice, I started an online CS50 Harvard course taught by David Malan through edX. Here’s some of the things I learned.
Blockchain/Bitcoins
What is Blockchain/Bitcoin?
First off, blockchain is not the same thing as “Bitcoin”. The blockchain is essentially a long list of every Bitcoin transaction that has ever been made- a public ledger. As each transaction is made, a new “block” is added to this blockchain. The point of the blockchain is that it serves as a decentralized way of keeping track of transactions. In a regular transactional system, a large entity would keep track of each transaction and hold those records (like a bank). In blockchain however, in order to verify a transaction, a large series of computers work together in order to solve a generated mathematical problem. After a person solves the equation, various other computers must also verify that they have the correct answer. As soon as a certain number of other people verify their answer, they’re awarded 25 Bitcoins (which will decrease in the future). The point of blockchain is to decentralize transactional systems and take away power from other entities that would usually do that themselves and take a percentage of profit away from the participants in the transaction. For example, if you were to transfer large sums of money (or even small ones at that), you would have to pay taxes and fees. Especially if they’re international exchanges. With virtual currencies like Bitcoin, nobody can charge you fees or taxes. On the flip side however, in theory, nobody can reverse a transaction either… even if your account was compromised.
At the end of the day, Bitcoin is just like any other currency; it inherently has absolutely no value. The only value it has is the value people place on it.
Side Note: I remember when I was a Freshman in high school, I wanted to start mining for Bitcoin (when it so much easier to do) because I believed it would grow in value. I didn’t know much about computers and didn’t know where to start, so I didn’t start. At that time it was worth $13.00 a piece. Today it’s worth $2,305 a piece.
And if that didn’t make any sense to you at all, maybe this beautiful piece of art GIF will help.
Additional Key Points About Blockchain and Bitcoins:
- Bitcoin is only one kind of cryptocurrency among many which use blockchain or a similar system
- These Bitcoins (or whatever cryptocurrency you’re mining) can be used for mainly three things: peer to peer transactions, a commodity in e-commerce, and exchanging/selling these Bitcoins for other currencies
- There’s a finite amount of Bitcoins which is estimated to reach its cap (21 million) sometime after the year 2100
- The more Bitcoins that are found, the harder the mathematical questions get, making it even harder to find Bitcoins and requires even more computing power in order to find them.
- This one guy, as well as some other people in the world, basically turned his house and various other real estate properties into Ethereum (the most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin) mining facilities.
- There’s even companies that are dedicated to mining cryptocurrencies and use insane, massive facilities full of machines dedicated to mining Bitcoin.
- On a more interesting note, some companies are even considering raising money in the form of cryptocurrencies by doing what’s referred to as an ICO (Initial Coin Offering). Wild.
Forget the old days of mining in caves using pickaxes and TNT. Today we’re using silicon, computers, and Wi-Fi. We’re in the future now.
Attribution Marketing
What is attribution marketing?
Marketing Attribution is studying every step a potential customer takes from when they first learn about a product or service to when they finally make a purchase and become an actual customer. In Marketing Attribution, the goal is to understand at a deep level, using data, what steps in the procurement process most heavily or least heavily impact the buying decisions of the customer. This way, business people can better appeal to their potential customers, increase their turnover rate, and ultimately make more people happy with their product or service.
Additional Key Points About Marketing Attribution:
- There’s various different kinds of models used to determine which touchpoints most heavily impact sales turnover rates. Here’s a list of 12 of them.
- Marketing attribution is completely built on data rather than intuition. Men lie, women lie, data doesn’t lie.
- However, that doesn’t mean data will tell you everything. There’s still many other things to consider.
Computer Science/Programming
What is computer science?
I won’t even try to explain what computer science is at a high level since it’s such a difficult field to understand, and I just started CS50. In a nutshell, computer science is the study of what computers [can] do. Computing primarily consists of 4 major categories: theory, algorithms, programming languages, and architecture. Each of which I’ll begin to learn more about in the future and will definitely expand upon more soon.
What is programming?
This is a little bit easier to talk about since programming is a part of computer science. Programming is the practice of making computers do things. See the difference?
In layman terms…
Computer Science:
Programming:
Additional Key Points About Computer Science/Programming:
- At the end of the day, learning about computers in general is hard and takes a lot of time.
- In terms of programming, if you think you’re a highly logical person and that computational logic would totally make sense to you and be easy, you probably have another thing coming.
- Loops are confusing.
- The programming language you learn doesn’t matter as much as understanding basic concepts/logic and being able to apply them to whatever you’re creating in whatever language you’re using.
- Front end languages and back end languages are far from similar.
- Don’t take your software developers/engineers for granted.
Side Note: If you feel that I’m wrong about anything I’ve written, please let me know! After all, I’m just a student of life and I’d love to learn if I’m wrong about something
Overall, super productive couple days. I’m excited to see what else I learn from CS50. Next on the list of things to learn more about next week: Quickbooks and How to Build Better Relationships with Strangers. I’ll keep you all posted.
Thanks for reading.
PLP
-Ethan
