New Delhi | Talibuddin Khan: Cryptocurrencies have lately been the talk of town with many countries looking forward to launch their own digital currencies while many others are already using private cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Litecoin — for purchase of any commodity or service.
Even if we look at the definition of cryptocurrency, — “A cryptocurrency is a tradable digital asset or digital form of money, built on blockchain technology that only exists online” — we will find the term blockchain.
Blockchain technology is a digitised and decentralised Digital Ledger Technology that keeps a track of digital transactions, also known as the block, of the public in several databases, known as the chain, in a network connected through peer-to-peer nodes.
Every transaction in this ledger is authorized by the digital signature of the owner, which authenticates the transaction and safeguards it from tampering.
Acting like a banking system where every account activity is recorded, the blockchain will constitute the bank’s financial transactions throughout its history and a block would be an individual bank statement.
The main purpose of its technology was to timestamp digital documents so that they could not be tampered.
This means a new block adds to the blockchain in a way that is it unalterable, and the transaction is now complete.