Before Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies were introduced to the world, we understood mining as the process of obtaining coal or other minerals from a mine/ earth. The major point to remember here is:

· Mining is not easy; it takes a lot of effort to mine these minerals from earth.

· Costs a lot and is not easy (manpower, huge machinery, bomb experts, trucks/ loaders, etc.)

· Finally extract these minerals as rewards for the mining company

Now cut to 2009 when Bitcoin was launched by Satoshi Nakamoto. This was the first ever Cryptocurrency and also the first ever Blockchain platform.

Blockchain is a series of Blocks that are chained to each other by some way. New blocks are generated in the network after a certain time interval (in Bitcoin new Blocks are generated every 10 minutes on an average).

You can see in the above diagram Blocks are connected to each other. Each Block has a Block Header which contains information about the data it stores, and also it takes information from the previous Block’s Header. Which means that:

1. Block 1 has information from Block 0.

2. Block 2 has information from Block 1 (and hence information of Block 0 as well).

3. Block 3 has information from Block 2 (and hence information of Block 0 and 1 as well).

4. Similarly, Block “n” will have information of all “n — 1” blocks and so on.

5. Thus, you can understand that each new Block in any Blockchain contains information of all the blocks that were created before it.

These Blocks as you can see in the diagram contains transactions. The transactions become final only when they become part of a valid Block. An example of a transaction in Bitcoin network is: Alice transferring 5 Bitcoins to Bob.

But how are these Blocks created?

Blockchain is a distributed network with many nodes together forming a single system. There is no single owner of this network, rather the entire network together come to a consensus on every decision that is to be made (majority wins).

So how do they achieve consensus? Through different consensus mechanisms like Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS), etc. (Bitcoin uses PoW as its consensus mechanism). These consensus algorithms are sort of puzzles (program based) that needs to be solved by nodes in the network in order to form Blocks.

These puzzles or problems can be easy or difficult to solve, it depends on what kind of platform you are on. Since Public Blockchain networks have a lot of nodes and participants, the consensus algorithms implemented are very complex and difficult to solve. But, on Private Blockchain platforms since parties are less and already known to each other, they have comparatively easier puzzles to solve.

Since these puzzles are difficult to solve on Public Blockchain platforms (like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash, etc.) this process is generally associated with a reward. Which means that, whoever solves the puzzle in these networks first, they are rewarded with native Crypto Tokens.

For Example: In Bitcoin network whichever node solves the PoW puzzle first will be rewarded with certain number of Bitcoins. Currently this reward is of 12.5 Bitcoins per block (it is halved every 4 years in Bitcoin network).

On platforms like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. “solving these consensus puzzles” is the only way to generate new tokens (like Bitcoins, Ethers, etc.). This means that when a new Block is produced in Bitcoin network, it also produces new Bitcoins in the network (currently 12.5 Bitcoin per block), and this is the only way new Bitcoins can be minted in the network (no other way).

Proof of Work is one of the most complex (but also very robust) consensus mechanisms available today. In order to solve this puzzle, nodes have to do Billions and Billions of calculations very quickly. These nodes compete against each other, because whoever solves the puzzle first, the chances of their block getting accepted by the network is the highest. And, whoever wins gets the reward (12.5 Bitcoins currently).

These Billions of calculations that these nodes have to do, costs a lot of computing and electrical power. There are special GPUs and AISEC Chips that are manufactured today just for solving this PoW puzzle (which are very costly). These processors consume a lot of electrical power. Just to give you an idea, Bitcoin mining alone uses ~0.29% of the World electrical power (Huge!!!).

So, in order to produce a new Blocks in such networks:

· A node has to do a lot of work.

· Costs a lot and is not easy.

· Only way to generates new Tokens on many Public Blockchain platforms like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.

So, What is Mining?

You can see that these characteristic of producing Blocks resembles a lot with actual mining of minerals as we discussed at the beginning of this article. Thus, this term mining was associated with Cryptocurrencies as well. And, whoever does this mining can be called as a miner.

All the nodes in a Public Blockchain network are considered homogenous and thus each node is free to compete in the process of producing new block i.e. anyone can be a miner (he will be able to successfully mine or not, depends on the computing power he/ she has).

While on Private Blockchain platforms, this term mining is not of much value, because these platforms do not have any Cryptocurrency associated with them. The main agenda of Private Blockchains is to produce new blocks, and not mine new coins. Also, mining is permissioned i.e. only allowed to selected nodes in the network. Thus, the consensus algorithms implemented on these Private Blockchains are a lot simpler than those in Public Blockchains. Some examples of consensus algorithms implemented in Private Blockchains are: Voting, Round Robin, PBFT, Ordering Service, etc.

On Public Blockchains — mining is the same as saying:

· Producing Blocks

· Solving Consensus Puzzle

· Generating new Coins

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website: https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Certified Blockchain Professional

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer

Cryptocurrency & Blockchain

For any other queries or issues you can email at: blockdigest@gmail.com

What is “Mining” with regards to Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain? was originally published in BlockDigest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Once someone learns Blockchain, they become biased towards the technology. Its not their fault, the technology is one hell of an invention and a beauty once you really understand how it works. Now people have started understanding that Blockchain is not just a technology that can make cryptocurrencies alone. Blockchain is applicable across industries.

But on the other hand, it also takes a lot of wisdom, experience, and in-depth knowledge of the technology to understand and accept that Blockchain cannot solve all the problems in the world.

It is important for a leader, entrepreneur, consultant, developer, manager, professor, etc. to be able to say NO to Blockchain when you do not really need it in your project/ process/ business, etc.

So how to know if Blockchain is needed or not?

Below is a flow diagram (referred from WEF and NITI Ayog) which helps you step by step analyse if you “really” need Blockchain or not in your project/ business etc. I will elaborate each step one by one

1. Are Multiple Parties Involved (more than 2)?

If your application or business has multiple stake holders involved (i.e. more than 2) or if there are different stake holders with different roles, then you can think of applying Blockchain in your network. If one 1 or 2 parties are involved then anyway there will be centralization in the network and you would not be able to use important properties of Blockchain.

For example: In a Supply Chain use case there are different stake holders like producer, transporter, distributors, retailer, etc. This type of business can use many properties of Blockchain like transparency, immutability, in-built trust in the network, etc.

If the answer to this question is NO, then you do not want to use Blockchain. But, if the answer is YES, then move to 2nd question.

2. Do you have Middlemen and want to remove them?

There are many businesses which have lot of unnecessary middlemen/ intermediaries. These parties are an overhead in terms of time and cost for any business. Ex: In International Trade Finance there are middlemen that do paper work for customs, some do packaging and handling to customs. These activities can be done by the business itself if the process is more streamlined and digital. Blockchain can help here and remove middlemen.

If the answer to this question is NO, then you may not want to use Blockchain. But, if the answer is YES, then move to 3rd question.

3. Working with Digital Assets instead of Physical assets?

Assets can be anything of value in the real world. For ex: a piece of land, diamonds, currency, chicken, a soda bottle, and the limit can be endless. In your project although you must be producing a physical version of these items or assets, but are you working with their digital versions for running business or are you directly dealing in physical assets?

Today many companies have transformed their business into digital assets i.e. dealing with items in their digital form.

If the answer to this question is NO, then you go to 4th question. But if your answer is YES, then you can jump directly to 5th question.

4. Can you couple digital and physical assets, with permanent and authenticated records of proof?

If your business has not already digitized assets, can you now do it? Are your assets such that they can be converted into digital form? It is important to use digital assets if you want to use Blockchain.

If the answer to this question is NO, then you do not want to use Blockchain. But, if the answer is YES, then move to 5th question.

5. Multiple parties require shared write access?

We discussed in 1st question that you do have multiple parties involved in your business/ project, and that is why you are still reading. So now the question is, do all these different actors of your application need write access to your application?

This means that, will more than one party in the network make some changes in the system or change the state of the system? For ex: If a physical asset is transferred from one party to another in a supply chain, this also needs to be reflected on the digital version of the asset on Blockchain and for the each of those parties will need write access.

If the answer to this question is NO, then you do not want to use Blockchain. But, if the answer is YES, then move to 6th question.

6. Required to store non-transactional data?

Blockchain is a transactional database i.e. Blockchain is made to store transactional data and not heavy file like images, videos, or other type of heavy files. In cases when heavy files or other than transactional data is also involved in a project, then Blockchain can be used in conjunction with other traditional databases like MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB, etc. But, Blockchain itself alone is currently not the best technology for such a requirement.

If the answer to this question is YES, then you may not want to use Blockchain. But, if the answer is NO, then move to 7th question.

7. Require high performance (Transactions per second)?

If you need a very high transactions per second capability in your projects then Blockchain is not for you as of now. One of the biggest limitations of Blockchain currently is its throughput of transactions per second (TPS) capability. If you are expecting TPS for your application in 100k or more than you may not want to use Blockchain.

Although there are many new developments happening in Blockchain to improve that and maybe in future Blockchain will be able to handle such requests as well.

If the answer to this question is YES, then you may not want to use Blockchain. But, if the answer is NO, then move to 8th question.

8. Do you need ability to control functionality?

Now if you are on this question, then your project/ business has a high chance of utilizing properties Blockchain for its benefits. Now the question is of whether you need Public Blockchain or Private Blockchain in your application.

- If you need separate permissions to be given to different parties in the network i.e. you need Rights and Access management.

- If you want to control onboarding or deboarding of parties.

- If you want additional privacy within parties.

If you need all these features in your application then you will need Private Blockchain for your application. Private Blockchain platform options are: Hyperledger Fabric, R3’s Corda, JP Morgan’s Quorum, MultiChain, etc.

But if the answer to this question is NO, the you move to 9th question.

9. Should transactions be Private?

The transactions that your project will have, do you want them to be Public and accessible for any random party? If YES, then you can use Public Blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, etc. as platforms for your applications. Example can be a crown funding application would require more and more parties to look at applications and have read access over transactions, such an application can use Ethereum Blockchain.

But if you want Private transactions then you would want to go for Private Blockchains as described in previous points.

So, these are some steps to determine if you need Blockchain in your application or not. Of course, these are not the only things which can decisively tell you to or not to implement Blockchain. These are general questions you need to ask before opting for Blockchain.

You yourself should also understand Blockchain in detail if you are an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Manager, a Consultant, a Professional, or a Professors who is looking for application of Blockchain in their work area.

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website:

https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Blockchain for Leaders — If you are an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Manager, a Consultant, a Professional, or a Professor looking for application of Blockchain in their work area, can help you understand Blockchain in detail with real-world Blockchain implementation

Certified Blockchain Professional — Take you from Zero to Fluent in Blockchain.

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer — Learn Blockchain and develop an end-to-end Smart Contract based application (dApp).

How to decide if you “really” need Blockchain or Not? was originally published in BlockDigest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Blockchain has been around since more than a decade now and still its adoption is not as much as it deserves. There are many factors that have contributed in slow adoption of the technology. I will list down them one by one:

Every New Tech Face Resistance:

History is witness that, almost every new technology that promises to change the way businesses are dealt with, has faced resistance for adoption. None of us can even believe today that “Internet” was initially rejected by many big companies (without which we cannot survive today). But this resistance for adoption is quite obvious, as no business would want to take risks of changing their well-established and tested processes. There are very few who are bold and would take that risk to go ahead with a technology that is yet to prove its true potential.

According to experts and research reports, it is said that almost 10% of the world’s GDP will lie on Blockchain by year 2030 (this is a huge number for a single technology).

Its Association with Cryptocurrencies:

Blockchain’s adoption until now has been largely dependent on the rise and fall of the Cryptocurrency market. This is very unfortunate because Blockchain has its applications much beyond just being an underlying technology of Cryptocurrencies. Blockchain is a horizontal technology which can applied across verticals or sectors.

Yet to Prove its True Potential:

Blockchain is hands down a very promising technology but it also is currently evolving and needs to be improved. There are a lot of limitations to Blockchain of which the biggest is “throughput” i.e. its transactions per second (TPS) capability. There are new developments happening to mitigate these limitations, and hopefully Blockchain will eventually evolve into something much beautiful to work with.

Complexity in Understanding:

Blockchain can be understood as a gourmet soup created with tried and tested computer science ingredients like Cryptography, Data Structures, Distributed Systems, Networking, etc. These concepts are generally familiar to a person who has some Computer Science background, others may struggle in truly understanding the technology if not explained properly.

It is obvious that such an invention will also introduce its own jargons. Terms like Block-Time, Block-Height, Nonce, etc. It can become a little difficult for a non-tech person to adopt to such terminologies quickly and thus people lose interest soon.

Lack of Blockchain Experts:

One of the biggest contributors is lack of in-depth knowledge of Blockchain across the world. The number of people across the world that can understand, develop, code, test, etc. on Blockchain is maximum to a 4-digit number. That’s too small when you compare experts in other technologies present today.

Many people mention Blockchain on their resume (expecting a good hike over their current salaries), but while getting interviewed struggle even in answering basic questions about how Blockchain works. This isn’t a good sign for Blockchain adoption, because there is a huge demand and very less supply of good Blockchain resource.

Dispersed Educational Content:

There are a lot of articles on and around Blockchain on internet today. Still it can be really difficult for a new-comer to understand how or where to start? There are several courses as well today but most of them (in my experience) lack in delivering what they appear to be. Most of the theoretical courses focus on teaching Blockchain via Bitcoin and then the student stay confused by the end on “what is the difference between Bitcoin and Blockchain?”.

Clearly most of these issues are around the fact that there is a lack of talent and knowledge in Blockchain. The key is to get educated properly in Blockchain.

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website: https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Certified Blockchain Professional

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer

For any other queries or issues you can email at: blockdigest@gmail.com

Why is Blockchain’s Adoption in Main-Stream Businesses so Slow? was originally published in BlockDigest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Blockchain made its debut in 2009 with the launch of Bitcoin. However, it was only after a few years that people started recognizing it as a technology in its own right — not necessary inseparable from the cryptocurrency. It is unfortunate that the tech is still hyphenated with crypto — its high point came in 2018 when Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies attained high valuations; the rise and fall of crypto market still dictates the level of attention the technology gets. Hence, the tech is yet to realize its true potential.

Cryptocurrencies acted as a live use case for Blockchain tech in the Financial Sector. This use case proved conclusively that money/ currency can be created in a decentralized manner, digitized, stored and transferred securely over a P2P network (public or private) without a single-point failure, or double-spending problem. Financial Sector thus became the first to adopt and apply Blockchain in a lot of their existing processes.

Financial sector is thus the most vibrant area of usage for Blockchain — a number of use cases in this sector are used live right now, and many more are in Pilot / POC stage. This space has and will see the highest number of use cases being tried out by different Banks and Financial Institutions across the globe, based on the number of pain points that the technology solves.

Some of the problems with current processes in this sector are:

1. A lot of paper work — Even when most of the bank processes are digitized, there is a lot of redundant paperwork that is to be done at the back end (either due to regulatory need, or the fact that financial institutions place more trust in paper).

2. Complicated reconciliation processes — Absence of a single view across all parties to a transaction ensures that there are multiple recon processes that each party needs to follow.

3. Long Trade/ Payment Settlements — A typical international trade finance transaction can take as long as 60–90 days to complete because of a lengthy and cumbersome, paper-heavy process. Sending money from one country to another isn’t as easy and quick as it sounds (when ideally it should be). It takes around 3–5 days to send money across.

4. Money Laundering — Tracing money is not always that easy and possible, thus leading to black money as a result. This impacts all the businesses that handle the Black money.

5. No Single Database for all — An example is the KYC process where every bank does their own KYC process despite a successful KYC of the same customer (often with same data) by another bank. This not only costs money but brings avoidable delays in downstream processes.

6. Bank Frauds — We see frauds in loans, Letter of Credits (LOC), fake currency, and many other areas where forgery is not insignificant. Banks lose $15 billion to $20 billion annually from identity fraud alone, according to Javelin research.

7. Conflicts — In most of the bank processes there are multiple parties involved, e.g., Seller, Seller’s Bank, Receiver, Receiver’s Bank, Customs in both countries, transporter, insurer, etc. are involved in any in International Trade Finance transaction. When there are so many parties involved there are bound to be conflicts, which lead to a painful and costly experience.

Blockchain with its various properties can resolve or mitigate most of these issues:

1. Blockchain maintains traceable and auditable history of data which is immutable. This eliminates use of paper, and reduces reconciliation requirements.

2. Multiple parties become part of a single network; all parties can see updates in real-time. This makes transactions faster and cheaper than the traditional processes.

3. Since all transactions can be traced to their genesis and the data is guaranteed tamper proof, source of funds and money trails can be established conclusively by regulators.

4. Multiple Banks/ financial institutes can become part of a single Blockchain network to maintain KYC data thus helping all in reducing redundancies in KYC efforts.

5. Data can be stored by banks in such a way that it is easy for regulatory authorities to audit it when required.

6. Since all parties are part of the same network, everyone can see data in real-time, and there is a trust in the data stored, conflict resolution can be easier in a Blockchain based system.

Some Use Cases:

Now these are just a few examples of how Blockchain can help Banks and Financial Organizations in general. There are many Finance Sector use cases where Blockchain can help, examples include:

Some Stats:

Global banking is currently a $122 — $124tn industry (early 2020). There are a lot of areas in which Blockchain can not only help save banks a lot money, but also help improve user experience, and reduce friction in processes.

• Accenture has estimated that the biggest investment banks could save $10bn by using Blockchain technology to improve the efficiency of clearing and settlement.
• A report by Loughborough University states that moving securities on blockchain could save $17bn to $24bn per year in global trade processing costs.

McKinsey estimates that blockchain-based solutions:

1. Applied to cross-border payments could save about $4bn a year.

2. customer onboarding can create up to $1bn of savings in operating costs for retail banks globally and reduce regulatory fines by $2bn to $3bn.

3. Can reduce annual losses from fraud by $7bn to $9bn.

Some Limitations:

Although Blockchain can be of a big help, as we mentioned earlier there are limitations to the technology at the moment. The biggest of all is throughput of transactions as measured by Transactions per Second (TPS).

You can see in below image how Bitcoin and Blockchain lag significantly behind traditional payment processes like Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal.

It is important to understand that currently the TPS capability of Blockchain networks is inversely related to the level of decentralization in the network. Which means that bigger the validating/ mining network, lower will be the throughput of that network.

Private Blockchain networks (with a limited number of parties in the network) which are using Hyperledger Fabric, or R3 Corda platforms as their Blockchain platforms can have significantly more TPS (500 to a 1000 TPS based on the configuration of the network) than Public networks like Bitcoin or Ethereum (with huge decentralized user base).

Public networks like EOS, Ripple, NEO, etc. have a higher TPS capabilities because their validation or mining process is confined to a smaller number of nodes in the network (making them less decentralized). Some Blockchain enthusiasts consider this type of centralization against the basic soul of Blockchain, where no single or set of users should have special privileges.

There are new developments in the area of improving TPS capabilities of Public Blockchain networks like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. Techniques like Sharding, State Channels, Lightning Networks, Sidechains, Plasma, etc. are in various stages of development and deployment. We should see significant improvements through implementations of these techniques in year 2020 on these platforms.

Finally

Blockchain is evolving even as you read this and will continue to help Financial Institutes across the world in various ways. As I said there are various new developments happening in Blockchain to mitigate its limitations. The year 2020 will encounter many use cases going live in Banks across the world (probably more than any other sector).

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website:

https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Blockchain for Leaders — If you are an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Manager, a Consultant, a Professional, or a Professor looking for application of Blockchain in their work area, can help you understand Blockchain in detail with real-world Blockchain implementation

Certified Blockchain Professional — Take you from Zero to Fluent in Blockchain.

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer — Learn Blockchain and develop an end-to-end Smart Contract based application (dApp).

Cryptocurrency & Blockchain — Learn connection of Cryptocurrencies with Blockchain (the technical aspect of things)

For any other queries or issues you can email at: blockdigest@gmail.com

Blockchain Use Cases — Financial Services — Part 2 was originally published in BlockDigest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“How can you really use Blockchain apart from Bitcoin?” a question I get whenever I am using “Blockchain” in my vocabulary. They aren’t wrong in asking this, because the fuzz/ hype around Blockchain is such that people are confused and are trying to get their heads around “what the hell it really is?”.

Every one of us understands a new topic/ technology based on our existing expertise i.e. a Mechanical engineer would appreciate Blockchain more if you could give him a use case involving a conveyer belt in a manufacturing unit. Similarly, a Banker would understand it better when you tell him that Home Loans can be made easier and faster using Blockchain.

In this article I will give you a quick understanding of what is Blockchain and then will not bother to explain in detail in upcoming articles. To understand Blockchain in a simple language here is an article I wrote

Blockchain is Distributed Digital Ledger on a P2P network that provides an immutable database of transactions, and hence facilitating transfer and storage of value.

Blockchain through its various properties like Decentralized P2P network, based on Strong Cryptographic primitives, Immutability, Transparency, Linked history of transactions, Solution to Double Spending frauds, etc. it is being used in across sectors to build trust-less environments.

But since Blockchain solves a lot of problems does not mean that it can solve all the problems in the world. It has limitations which the industry is trying to mitigate at the moment. So, we cannot apply Blockchain anywhere and everywhere just because we have learnt it. We have to be wise in measuring the advantages against the disadvantages in different scenarios we are dealing in.

This can be a really expensive topic to answer, if you ask me? People charge money for consulting on Blockchain use cases. Nevertheless, we at BlockDigest are focused on providing Blockchain solutions and are constantly involved in educating people/ groups/ companies on Blockchain and related topics. So, we would like to answer this question in a series of articles. These articles will be based on different industries/ sectors like Finance, Retail, Government, Education, Healthcare, Energy, Manufacturing, etc.

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website:

https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Blockchain for Leaders — If you are an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Manager, a Consultant, a Professional, or a Professor looking for application of Blockchain in their work area, can help you understand Blockchain in detail with real-world Blockchain implementation

Certified Blockchain Professional — Take you from Zero to Fluent in Blockchain.

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer — Learn Blockchain and develop an end-to-end Smart Contract based application (dApp).

Cryptocurrency & Blockchain — Learn connection of Cryptocurrencies with Blockchain (the technical aspect of things)

For any other queries or issues you can email at: blockdigest@gmail.com

Blockchain Use Cases — Where can I use Blockchain? — Part 1 was originally published in BlockDigest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Libra: “(in ancient Rome) a unit of weight, equivalent to 12 ounces (0.34 kg). It was the forerunner of the pound.”

Don’t worry, you have come to the right place, we will talk about “Libra — The Cryptocurrency” to be. Why am I explaining the literal meaning of it? It will be clear in a moment.

The long-awaited speculation/ rumour of Facebook launching its own Cryptocurrency was over when Facebook (in June 2019) officially announced that they will be launching their Crypto by the name Libra in the mid of year 2020. But it won’t be exactly similar to other famous Cryptocurrencies that you might have heard of like Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, etc.

Why Libra? What is wrong with Bitcoin?

One of my friends was getting married in March of 2018 and for his honeymoon he planned to go to Hawaii for 7 days with stay in a 5-Star hotel. He did all this planning in December of 2017 as he owned 1 full Bitcoin (the price was soaring towards 20K USD/ Bitcoin during that time). He was sure that he not only will be able to fund his honeymoon but also save some healthy amount after selling his Bitcoin. Since the whole market was bullish on it, he waited and got busy with preparations for his marriage. In February 2018 (just 2 months after) he looked at the price of Bitcoin and it was around 6000 USD/ Bitcoin. He then went to Pondicherry for his Honeymoon.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Pondicherry is all good and beautiful, but you get the idea, right? The Cryptocurrency market is so volatile that you cannot be certain about price of any Crypto in the next 2 days, let alone be 2 months. Prices of Fiat currencies (Dollars, Pounds, Rupees, etc.) and stocks (equity) are not so volatile, right? So, there has to be a similar reliability and credibility on the prices of these Cryptocurrencies for people to have some trust in holding it for long and using it. This is where Stablecoins come into picture.

Stablecoins and How will Libra work:

Cryptocurrencies that are pegged to either a fiat currency, or another Cryptocurrency, or to an exchange traded commodity (like Gold, Silver, etc.) are called Stablecoins.

Libra is a Stablecoin. Having said that, let me take this opportunity to explain both Stablecoins and Libra together.

1 Libra will be equivalent to 1 US Dollar.

1 Libra == 1 $

This means that if a person decides to buy 100 Libra tokens, he/ she will pay 100 US Dollars to Facebook, and Facebook will then keep those 100 Dollars safe in a Libra Reserve (could be a bank). At this point 100 new Libra tokens/ coins will be generated and assigned to that person. These 100 US Dollars will always be safe in the reserve, unless that person decides to sell those Libra tokens (some or all).

So, if ever that person wants to cash out 50 Libra tokens, then 50 US Dollars will be taken out from the Libra Reserve, given to the owner and those 50 cashed out Libra tokens will then be destroyed and cannot be used again, ever.

There have been many other Stablecoins in past like Tether and Paxos (equivalent of 1 US Dollar), EKON (equivalent to 1 gram of gold), etc.

A good thing about these tokens is that their price does not fluctuate as much as those of other Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether, etc. This is because their value is equivalent to the commodity it is pegged to (Dollars, Pounds, Euros, Silver, Gold, etc.). Due to this, these tokens have a higher probability of being accepted as a source of payment by various service providers across the globe.

How Libra network will be established?

There are around 28 companies (this number will increse with time) like Uber, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Stripe, Vodafone, eBay, Spotify, etc. who have come together to form a not-for-profit Libra Association, which oversee:

• The development of the Libra token.
• The reserve of real-world assets that gives it value, and
• The management of rules of the blockchain platform that it will.be based on.

Each founding member has paid $10 Million in order to be a part of this association and also these parties will have option to host a Libra node i.e. to make Libra network decentralized (You need to understand Blockchain in detail to understand what I am talking about).

The Good

Around 2 Billion people (according to Libra’s Whitepaper) in the world are unbanked or underbanked. Even some percentage of American population comes under this category. These people do not have financial opportunities to grow their capital and transact into broader markets.

In many countries internet is also an issue. Either it is accessible only by a very small percentage of population or is unavailable. This is where Facebook has a distinct advantage. For many people around the world, Facebook is the only way they can access the internet and subsequently any digital financial system. Infact people of some countries think of internet as Facebook. And this is how will Libra have a positive impact:

1. People who do not have a bank account but have some money will be able to buy Libra.
2. Facebook intends on setting up shops or physical exchanges across the world where people can go and buy Libra in exchange of the local fiat currency (suitable for unbanked audiance)
3. Once a person owns Libra, they should be able to spend it using Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and other future Facebook’s handles.
4. Spend it on platforms provided by all these companies that will be part of this Libra Association.
5. Imagine travelling from one country to another, and taking an Uber. You will be able to pay in Libra and not worry about buying local currency of the country you are visiting.
6. Being marketed by Facebook, it can have a wider adoption and hence more services for people across the world.

These are all good things Libra can posaibly do, but what about the downside?

The Bad

Facebook has not had a good track record and isn’t exactly known for its ethical operations. You may remember a few incidents:

• People’s data to flow to Cambridge Analytica, to manipulate the presidential election in the US.
• Accused of election manipulation in Africa, and
• Has even been implicated in the genocide of Rohingyas in Myanmar.

These things can lead to a really scary future:

1. Imagine Facebook now selling your financial transactions history for their personal profits.
2. Government can force Facebook to share financial details i.e. transactions of a person for their surveillance. Example: Imagine a woman in Saudi Arabia who might want to donate to an organization supporting the rights of women and if the government found that out. She would be killed.
3. Facebook is choosing association members very carefully, and can easily manipulate them in future to change/ modify system to fulfil their personal agenda(s).
4. This won’t be a truly decentralized system. A network like Bitcoin is not governed by anybody and in this situation Bitcoin (and alike) will be a better choice.

If Libra does become a global success and gets accepted by a huge number of people, the horror might start then:

1. Libra will become a centrally governed global currency.
2. What if government then puts a full stop (temporarily or permanently) on Libra, when a lot of people have heavily invested in it?
3. What if Facebook starts censoring your purchase?
4. What if the ruling party puts a “No Trade” rule on purchase of products that promotes opposition parties?
5. What if Facebook decides to deboard you because of a nasty comment or an inappropriate video?
6. Of course, not to mention all the hacking that goes on social media accounts.

The Useless

In a country like India where Crypto (currently banned) future doesn’t seem to be very bright, Facebook will not launch local booths to buy Libra. And Indian government has anyway cut the link between banks and exchanges and so any person with only an Indian Bank account cannot buy or sell Crypto (Since July 2018).

So, people here in India and such countries where there is a ban on Crypto, will not be able to make use of it. Having said that, if a person in India finds a way to own some Libra, he/ she can use it everywhere else in the world wherever it is acceptable.

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website:

https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Blockchain for Leaders — If you are an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Manager, a Consultant, a Professional, or a Professor looking for application of Blockchain in their work area, can help you understand Blockchain in detail with real-world Blockchain implementation

Certified Blockchain Professional — Take you from Zero to Fluent in Blockchain.

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer — Learn Blockchain and develop an end-to-end Smart Contract based application (dApp).

Cryptocurrency & Blockchain — Learn connection of Cryptocurrencies with Blockchain (the technical aspect of things)

For any other queries or issues you can email at: blockdigest@gmail.com

Facebook’s Libra (Stablecoin) — Good? Bad? Useless? was originally published in BlockDigest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It has been quite a while now, we have been reading and hearing a lot about rising and falling prices of Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple, and other such popular Cryptocurrencies. But have we really paid attention to why the word “Crypto” is associated with them? Also, many people today just refer to them as Crypto rather than Cryptocurrencies. So, it’s about time when we know why the hell “Crypto”?

The underlying technology of all Cryptocurrencies existing today (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, Zcash, Dash, etc.) is Blockchain. People who understand Blockchain or have studied something about it know that Blockchain is heavily dependent on different Cryptographic primitives like Hash Functions, Asymmetric Key Cryptography, Merkle Tree, Digital Signatures, Ring Signatures, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, etc.

Many Blockchain properties like immutability (tamper-proofing), data security, privacy, etc. are derived from these Cryptographic primitives it uses. Without Cryptography, Blockchain technology will collapse or would not have all of its amazing properties (which makes it unique and useful). So, Cryptography being one of the most important components of Blockchain (and Blockchain being the underlying tech of these Cryptocurrencies) the term “Crypto” was picked up and eventually it stuck (let's agree, it’s quite catchy).

I will quickly take this opportunity to also explain the “currency” part of it, and that’s because although we have been using regular fiat currencies (Dollars, Pounds, Rupees, etc.) for all our lives, many of us still don’t really know what currency really means.

“Currency is something (or anything) which is currently acceptable by a group of individuals/organizations/groups, etc.”

Any thing can be considered as a currency as far as there are people who are ready to accept it in exchange of other commodities, goods or services. Other people might not think of it as currency and that’s perfectly fine. We generally have this notion that only fiat currencies (Dollars, Pounds, Rupees, etc.) or notes and coins printed and legalized by government of a country are currencies. But that’s not true, anything can be a currency between a certain set of people.

Cryptography is around since a very long time now and before Cryptocurrencies were famous, the term Crypto was normally referred for Cryptography (between mathematicians and other Cryptography enthusiasts). Today since Cryptocurrencies have gained so much popularity, Crypto has become more of a slang in Blockchain and Cryptocurrency community. So, don’t be shocked if you offend a mathematician someday for calling Cryptocurrencies as Crypto 😊.

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website:

https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Blockchain for Leaders — If you are an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Manager, a Consultant, a Professional, or a Professor looking for application of Blockchain in their work area, can help you understand Blockchain in detail with real-world Blockchain implementation

Certified Blockchain Professional — Take you from Zero to Fluent in Blockchain.

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer — Learn Blockchain and develop an end-to-end Smart Contract based application (dApp).

Cryptocurrency & Blockchain — Learn connection of Cryptocurrencies with Blockchain (the technical aspect of things)

For any other queries or issues you can email at: blockdigest@gmail.com

Why The Hell Are They Called ‘Crypto’ currencies? was originally published in BlockDigest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you are new to Crypto world or have invested in Bitcoin (or other Altcoins like Ether, Ripple, etc.) but do not really know about Cryptocurrencies, you might not be aware of Blockchain. Or you might be under an impression that Blockchain and Bitcoin are one and the same thing.

Many people today have this confusion (and they don’t even know that they have a confusion) and I have tried to answer a few questions around this in our course by BlockDigest and also on Quora (Links at the bottom of the article).

First let me burst this myth and tell you that “Bitcoin is NOT Blockchain and Blockchain is NOT Bitcoin”, they are 2 related but different things. Blockchain is the underlying technology using which Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies (more than 2000) are made of.

Satoshi Nakamoto (identity unknown) who created Bitcoin, never mentioned Blockchain anywhere in his Whitepaper. But practically he (or a group/ team) was the one who introduced this technology to the world. I don’t expect for readers to understand Blockchain in detail but I would like to give you a little understanding of it with an example of Bitcoin network.

There are many participants/ users who are part of Bitcoin network today and each second many people are transferring Bitcoins to each other (Using Crypto Exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, etc. or other methods). These transfers are nothing but transactions in the Bitcoin network (or any other Blockchain-based Cryptocurrency). These transactions are then bunched up into Blocks i.e. a few transactions are picked up and arranged in form of a Block, and each new Block is connected in some way to the previous Block (thus forming a link or a chain). So, looking at the way these transactions and blocks are arranged, some tech enthusiast started calling this technology as Blockchain.

But Why Is It Important To Understand Blockchain In Order To Understand Cryptocurrencies?

There are many Cryptocurrencies in market. If you look at them, they are nothing but digital tokens existing on some software (which most people neither understand and nor care about). But then it should raise the following type of questions in your mind:

· How are these Cryptocurrencies different from Digital version of fiat currencies i.e. Dollars, Pounds, Rupees, etc. that your bank provides you through online banking?

· If they are just digital tokens, why did it take so long for people to invent it?

· Who creates these Cryptocurrencies?

· What is so different about these Cryptocurrency Tokens that they are so hyped today?

· What government approvals or rules are applied to these Cryptocurrencies?

· Why to use them when we already have fiat currencies?

Now these are some smart questions that will make you read more and more around Cryptocurrencies. To answer all of the above questions, you need to understand the technology which is being used behind these Cryptocurrencies and that is Blockchain. Only when you understand Blockchain to a certain level, you will then be able to understand how Crypto works and how they are different from your regular fiat currencies (Dollars, Pounds, Rupees, etc.).

Blockchain Through Many Of Its Properties Make Cryptocurrencies Very Different From Regular Fiat Currencies. Properties Like:

1. Decentralized and Distributed Peer to Peer Network:

No one owns these Cryptocurrencies, rather all the participants together verify and validate all the transactions and blocks. Thus, there is no central authority in control (unlike in the case of Fiat Currencies). All the participants have equal rights and opportunities in such a network and no special authorities are given to any participant. All nodes in the network maintain a complete history of all transactions and blocks at all times and this gets updated regularly by in-built mechanisms.

2. Based on Strong Cryptographic Primitives:

Blockchain combines many Cryptographic techniques like Hash Algorithms, Asymmetric Key Cryptography, Digital Signatures, Merkle Tree, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Ring Signatures, etc. and thus makes the whole Blockchain structure very robust and difficult to break.

3. Immutability:

Transactions that become part of a Block in Blockchain can never be modified or deleted, only new transactions can be added in new Blocks or older transactions can be read. This provides surety, that once a transaction is done, no one can deny, delete or modify it for their benefit.

4. Transactions are Public:

These transactions are visible to all the parties in the network. Some platforms like Zcash (ZEC) also gives you the facility to create Private transactions where crucial information of a transaction (Sender’s or Receiver’s identity, number of tokens being transferred, etc.) can be hidden.

5. Programmability:

Transactions can also be programmed. Platforms like Ethereum provide Smart Contracts facility which helps you create sophisticated programs that can be stored and executed on Blockchain itself. This feature has led to a lot of development around Blockchain across sectors. This feature can also help you put complicated rules on your newly created Cryptocurrencies.

6. Linked History Enables Easy Traceability:

Since each Block is connected to its previous block, any transaction or token can be traced back to its genesis (the point at which it was created) by any participant in the network. Thus, improves trust in the network.

7. Solution to Double Spending Fraud:

Blockchain with its built-in mechanisms will prohibit someone from spending the same tokens/ coins twice i.e. if Party A in Bitcoin network, tries to send the same Bitcoins to Party B and C both, then ultimately only 1 of those transactions will be part of the Bitcoin Blockchain network, the other transaction will be rejected eventually by the whole network.

Of course, Blockchain can be used in much more useful ways than just being a tech for Crypto. And in fact, today it is being used across sector throughout the world. Some industry experts believe that it will play a very vital role in coming times and some people also call it the next big thing after internet.

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website:

https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Blockchain for Leaders — If you are an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Manager, a Consultant, a Professional, or a Professor looking for application of Blockchain in their work area, can help you understand Blockchain in detail with real-world Blockchain implementation

Certified Blockchain Professional — Take you from Zero to Fluent in Blockchain.

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer — Learn Blockchain and develop an end-to-end Smart Contract based application (dApp).

Cryptocurrency & Blockchain — Learn connection of Cryptocurrencies with Blockchain (the technical aspect of things)

For any other queries or issues you can email at: blockdigest@gmail.com

Why Can’t You Understand Cryptocurrencies Without Understanding Blockchain? was originally published in BlockDigest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

People with a non-computer science or a non-technical background are not generally equipped enough to understand new technologies that are invented every day. They tend to run away generally when a technical discussion is taking place either on internet, or television, or in a group of friends.

Any technology which is new, and has the potential to change the world, needs people (as many as possible) to understand it, talk about it, discuss its advantages and disadvantages, talk about its applicability, how it can help or not help different processes and businesses across sectors, etc. To be able to do that you need people of all categories to be able to understand that technology to a certain level.

One such technology is Blockchain, which is a little difficult to understand if you go into technical details of it (and considering you have a non-computer science background). Its only fair when someone could convert these difficult jargons and technicalities into a real-world understandable example, that can be understood by people all ages (from 5 years old to 75 years old).

We at BlockDigest are focused on providing Blockchain solutions and are constantly involved in Blockchain and Crypto education. So, I will try to explain Blockchain with the easiest real-world example which you will be able to relate to (no matter what your age is or what educational background you have). I am sure about it because I explained Blockchain to my family with the same example 😊 (and they understood it quite well).

The Story begins:

Imagine a group of 12 friends (named as January to December), these friends have the following qualities:

· All 12 of these friends are honest people and they do not cheat/ lie with anyone “EVER”.

· There is a ritual within this group to share everything happening with them over walkie-talkie (they all have one).

· It never happens that any information is left without its broadcast over their walkie-talkie network.

· These friends are super smart and have great memory. They never (I repeat, never ever) forget anything that has ever been broadcasted on their network.

· If anyone has ever tried to lie, everyone else in the group has sent alert “LIE DETECTED!! I REPEAT, LIE DETECTED!!”, to make sure that everyone will know that this information is a lie/ fake news and we shouldn’t store it in our minds for future use.

Due to these properties of this group, they remain best friends who trust each other a lot and that is because it is really difficult to lie about something that has happened in the past (which has been shared with the group — and the group shares everything). Since things are shared, and they have good memory, if anyone would lie or would modify a truth, they all will immediately know about it (through alerts).

So now imagine the following scenarios:

1. If September gave a rose to April on Valentine’s Day, everyone in the group will eventually know about it and then neither September nor April will be able to deny about this event in future (because all of them know about it).

2. if June bought an iPhone from January in exchange of $100, everyone will know about it. If after a year of use, June tries to sell that iPhone to August saying that this is a brand-new iPhone, then August can straightaway deny this lie because he listened the broadcast on their walkie-talkie network a year ago. Not only this, if asked to any of the friends (other 10 in the group), they will also confirm the same (as they are truthful and they never forget).

3. March had 5 imported chocolates which his father gifted him 2 months ago. They were so precious and delicious that every group member wanted to get 1 from March in exchange of any precious thing they had. But March was not interested initially and kept consuming those chocolates in the last 2 months. 2 days ago, he ate his 4th chocolate, but just before he consumed that chocolate, October’s walkie-talkie had a glitch and he wasn’t able to get this update (and 2 days later i.e. today his walkie-talkie started working again). Now March wanted a pair of Nike shoes that October has, and he also wanted the skate-board that December has. Since he only had 1 chocolate left, he could only exchange it either with October or December. Since October didn’t know about the 4th chocolate, March tries to trick him and offered him 1 chocolate in exchange of Nike and also offered 1 chocolate to December in exchange of the skate-board. October was unaware of this, so he agreed for the deal. But everyone else in the group started sending alters “MARCH TRYING TO CHEAT!! I REPEAT, MARCH ONLY HAS 1 CHOCOLATE LEFT!!”. Soon October realises (after receiving alters from all) that March was lying, and he backed off with the deal.

Looking at above scenarios, it should be clear to you by now that it is very difficult to lie or manipulate any information that has been exchanged in past over their network. Because even if 2 or 3 friends agree on lying on an activity which took place in past, others can deny that fraudulent information. For a lie or manipulation of a fact to take place, more than half of the entire group should agree on lying (majority wins). But it is very, very difficult in a group of such truthful people to convince more than half of them to lie.

Such is a Blockchain network. A Blockchain network is just like how any network works (internet, intranet, LAN, VPN, etc.). It has digital devices like computers, laptops, mobile phones, etc. as part of their network (called participants/ nodes/ parties etc.). All these parties store every information being transmitted on the network (transactions), that can never be modified or deleted once stored (called immutability). Because everyone stores the same information and they approve every transaction happening in the network, everyone together makes such a network possible and it is not owned by any single person.

Imagine in our above example of 12 friends, if January was the leader of the group and only January maintained all information of the group, then all the validations would only go through January to be proven right or wrong. Whatever January says will be considered as the final truth.

Which means that in our 2nd example above, if January would have told August that the iPhone which June is offering you is brand new (lying, because it is actually a year old), then August would have believed him no matter what, because only January stores and maintains all the data (so August and everyone else would consider it as the final truth).

Such a centrally owned arrangement is an issue because of the following reasons:

· What if January starts lying for his own good?

· What if all data stored with January is lost?

· What if secrets of the group are stolen from January?

· What if January gets corrupted (it’s easy to manipulate 1 person than 12)?

· What if January decides to leave this group of friends and dumps/ deletes/ destroys all the information collected till date?

· What if January dies?

To remove/ tackle all these issues from centrally owned systems like Banks, Insurances, Energy, etc. Blockchain technology was thought of. The first application of Blockchain technology was Bitcoin launched in 2009 as a virtual/ digital currency on the internet (not owned by any bank or any single organization, rather by all the parties who wants to be a part of that network).

Blockchain tackles all the above problems, and we get the following benefits:

· More trust, as everyone has the entire history of what happened in their network

· If someone lies, others can easily prove it

· No single person owns the network, so no single point of failure

· Even if one person/ participant leaves the network, others will still have all the information (history of the network) and thus the network will not crash

· It is very difficult to convince or manipulate a bigger set of participants than just1 party.

Because of these benefits, Blockchain today is being used in a lot of different sectors like Finance, Retail, Manufacturing, Insurance, Energy, Real Estate, Healthcare, Telecomm, Social Media and many more. Blockchain is for everyone and anyone who can make sense out of it.

All Cryptocurrencies in the world are made up of Blockchain technology, but Blockchain is not limited to just that. Today it is being used across sectors throughout the world. Some industry experts believe that it will play a very vital role in coming times to improve businesses and processes. And some people also call it the next big thing after internet.

If this makes sense and excites you (like it did to me when I first came across Blockchain), you can dive deeper into the world of Blockchain through various courses on Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies by BlockDigest.

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website:

https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Blockchain for Leaders — If you are an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Manager, a Consultant, a Professional, or a Professor looking for application of Blockchain in their work area, can help you understand Blockchain in detail with real-world Blockchain implementation

Certified Blockchain Professional — Take you from Zero to Fluent in Blockchain.

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer — Learn Blockchain and develop an end-to-end Smart Contract based application (dApp).

Cryptocurrency & Blockchain — Learn connection of Cryptocurrencies with Blockchain (the technical aspect of things)

For any other queries or issues you can email at: blockdigest@gmail.com

Explaining Blockchain to my complete family was originally published in BlockDigest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

People in India are a lot confused and misinformed around the topic of “Ban on Cryptocurrencies” or “Ban on Bitcoin”. I would like to bust some myths around this topic today.

Government of India (GOI) and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have been warning people of the country about the risks involved while investing into Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and other Altcoins since 2013. It has been saying that because of the volatile and uncontrolled nature of the prices of these Cryptocurrencies and its potential use in black markets.

As a follow up to that, RBI in April of 2018 asked all the banks of India to stop dealing with any entity that deals in Cryptocurrencies in any way. It gave public a time of 3 months to settle all their owned Cryptocurrencies, and banks were open to deal with such entities (during this 3 months period). After July of 2018, if people in India who were still owning these Cryptocurrencies, could not cash it out in form of Indian Rupees through any of the banks in India (because RBI barred banks).

But it is not illegal to hold Cryptocurrencies by a Citizen of India as of Aug 2019.

You cannot cash your Cryptocurrencies doesn’t make it illegal. There is no law currently to penalize or put you in jail for holding Crypto. There are some bills currently being written which might make it illegal to hold Crypto by an Indian citizen, but they are just in draft mode right now and have not passed. Even when they will be presented in parliament, they may or may not pass. So as of now if you hold some Bitcoins, Ethers, Litecoins, XRPs, etc. don’t panic or be afraid. You can use it to buy services or goods if someone (apart from banks) is willing to take your Crypto in exchange of it.

Now on the ban, Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has challenged this RBI’s circular in Supreme Court (SC) of India saying that RBI has banned cryptocurrencies on ‘moral grounds’ as there were no studies the banking regulator conducted to analyse if these virtual currencies were actually harmful or not and a total prohibition on cryptocurrencies was uncalled for.

Under the Right to Information (RTI) act of India, IAMAI questioned RBI that what exact study was undertaken for this ban on Crypto? To which RBI has replied and accepted that

“no study had been undertaken by the RBI and neither had any committee been formed to analyse the risks and benefits of cryptocurrency, before banning it”.

To that, the Supreme Court has asked RBI to a chart and cite instances or judgments from other countries which have regulated cryptocurrency, instead of banning it. To give you some insights of how other countries are treating Crypto:

1. US — is trying to regulate Crypto via SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). SEC is the entity in US which regulates all securities (Stocks in stock market) and the companies publicly listed. In a similar way it is also trying to regulate Crypto with time.

2. Europe — considers Crypto as an Asset. So people who own Crypto will have to pay taxes as per the rules set in Europe on Assets. But it is perfectly legal to own Crypto.

3. Japan and Switzerland — have declared it as a legal tender, which means you can go to a shop in any of these countries and can buy a bicycle in exchange of Crypto that you own (and its completely legal). In other words, it can be used like Fiat currencies (Euros, Yen, etc.)

And different countries are accepting Crypto in their own way. In such a time of technology, a complete ban on Crypto might not go very well for India. And it might also affect adoption of Blockchain technology (which is the underlying tech of all Cryptocurrencies), because people often get confused between Crypto and Blockchain and they consider both the same. Due to such a permanent ban, people might also think that Blockchain is also banned and we should not look into its development (which won’t be very good for India as a digitally developing country).

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website:

https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Blockchain for Leaders — If you are an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Manager, a Consultant, a Professional, or a Professor looking for application of Blockchain in their work area, can help you understand Blockchain in detail with real-world Blockchain implementation

Certified Blockchain Professional — Take you from Zero to Fluent in Blockchain.

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer — Learn Blockchain and develop an end-to-end Smart Contract based application (dApp).

Cryptocurrency & Blockchain — Learn connection of Cryptocurrencies with Blockchain (the technical aspect of things)

For any other queries or issues you can email at: blockdigest@gmail.com

What does “Ban” on Cryptocurrencies in India means (as of Aug — 2019)? was originally published in BlockDigest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.