Blockchains: Unravelling 3 most common misconceptions

Generally, the first thing that comes to common minds, after hearing the word “Blockchain” is “Bitcoin”, “Cryptocurrency”. Isn’t it so? Well there is a myth, that just got busted – nothing is same at all. The actual truth lies in the fact that advertisements by the blockchain development companies have made it so confusing, that now most people believe all of them to be synonymous. Read more on what myths are circulating around near blockchain technology, to get a fresh new perspective about this hot and trending technology which is rooting itself deep into banking, healthcare, travel, education and, in future may be, in government sectors.

Before moving ahead, let us understand: What is Blockchain?

In the most simplest words: A technology emerged in 2008, through Satoshi Nakamoto, which was destined to change the conceptions of transactions, as were known then. The blockchain name happened for a simple reason that the digital information is stored in these blockchains in the form of blocks – each uniquely identified. As the transactions happen, each information storing block gets connected to each other, and a closed connection forms between the blocks, which disallows any other addition of blocks in between them, thus creating a more secure environment for the digital data. With its first application launched, as Bitcoin along-side, compelled sectors to exploit more potential of Blockchain technology. After this initial rush a lot of companies has entered the blockchain services industry and started working on blockchain app development. However the Myths regarding the technology has also risen during the time span.

Finally, let’s proceed to the interesting part:
1. Myth- Blockchains are Public-Sourced
Fact- Not all Block chains are same

As in the requirement grows, new blockchains came into picture. While one might find an abundance in Public Blockchains such as Litecoin or Bitcoin, likewise there is a wide existence of private blockchains such as Bankchain. The common comparison can be made out by the fact that public blockchains are more open-sourced and functions of auditing and reviewing is much more acceptable in comparison to private blockchains, but are slower than private blockchains. One more striking factor needed to be considered is that Public blockchains are more trustworthy than private one, since the owner in later one provides permission to access and moreover in much cases have the full authority to rewrite or edit as per his wish.

2. Myth- Blockchains are limited to Financial usage
Fact- Every sector is foreseeing its future with blockchains

Let’s forget Finance for once, governments are planning to take up on the already much researched idea of utilizing blockchains in the sectors of healthcare, education and agriculture. Not only that, state governments in India are now planning to devise blockchain services and blockchain development solutions for governmental land registrations. Moreover, they are taking initiates state IT industries to help them mitigate the issues of revenue departments, through blockchain technologies. Healthcare sector has always been enthusiastic about how blockchains can help them out in the working, patient’s data integrity, health records, claims and much more.

3. Myth- Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin- can be used interchangeably
Fact- Blockchain is the base technology behind Bitcoin

To understand better, its important to understand that Blockchain is a much larger term. Bitcoin is an application, possibly the very first, of blockchain technology. And Bitcoin is a kind of Cryptocurrency, where the latter is also termed as digital or virtual currency. To give a better shape to the fact check, lets understand how are all these interconnected, yet different. For any cryptocurrency (here let’s say Bitcoin), a blockchain caters as a ledger which stores all the transaction and take cares of the peer to peer transactions. In a way, it is easy to understand now that how Blockchains is a much wider technology, which is helping one form of Cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin to perform in an usable and secure manner.

Hopefully, this was helpful and would make you believe more on Blockchains sustainability and the future it is promising to the world of internet and other sectors.