Triple-Entry Accounting c/o Bitcoin
One of the GREATEST innovations in the past few hundred years.
Humankind was once a very simple species, never keeping track of ownership, probably due to a lack of need. As time has progressed and thought has evolved, we have begun to solidify our sense of self, and in that solidification we have found the need to own “things.”
While a need for ownership of “things” is not necessarily the greatest evolution of mankind, it has yielded us a foundation upon which to build most, if not all, of the systems we have come to rely on today.
The world was first graced with single-entry accounting. This allowed us move forward from the simple day-to-day grind, giving us the ability to plan for the future by taking into account items we had assumed ownership of. With this newfound knowledge, we were bestowed with the ability to allocate, ration, and make schedules. Not all was good, though, as single entry accounting only allowed for one record. This one record was usually maintained by a single authority who could alter records as they saw fit, skewing recording keeping to be favorable to the well-to-do.
Around the 1400’s, multiple societies developed their own forms of the double-entry accounting method, while the printing press was simultaneously invented. The printing press, arguably also one of mankind’s greatest inventions, allowed for valuable information to be preserved and shared on scales larger than ever seen before. This combination of inventions allowed for the double-entry method of accounting to proliferate and make record keeping sound for generations upon generations. It has managed to remain the standard even today.
Around 1989 a professor by the name of Yuji Ijiri came up with a revolutionary new idea: triple entry accounting. It was so novel and new that it did not really catch on. Some time later, in 2005, a cryptographer named Ian Griggs came up with his own version of the triple-entry accounting system. A few years later, the world was introduced to BitCoin.
The person/entity named Satoshi Nakamoto was creating a new form of currency that was purely digital and strictly peer to peer. Satoshi was needing to solve a major issue in the accounting of this digital currency that would ensure that it could function properly with no centralized database keeping track of the transactions. This is when Satoshi found out about triple-entry accounting. The first two entries are quite similar to the two entries in a double-entry accounting system, with records showing the debitor and the creditor. The third entry is a receipt, or contract, of the digital transaction. This third entry is very important as it serves as proof that a transaction actually occured, and it is immutable because it is stored in a block in the blockchain.
With this new innovation, humanity has been graced with an ability to safely and securely monitor and conduct all forms of transactions of data. Think about transactions of monetary assets such as stocks, or legal records as in votes for an election. Verification, immutability, convenience, and transparency all in such a simple package. The future is here.
