字幕列表 影片播放
-
In the diamond industry around 1 million precious stones are being digitised to prevent fraud.
-
Each diamond will have a unique fingerprint, identifying its origin and tracing its history.
-
From the mine it came from, to the jeweller's shop window.
-
All made possible by blockchain technology.
-
Blockchain is a new way to store and record transactions.
-
It's very much like a traditional database,
-
but the blocks are linked together cryptographically
-
in order to make sure that they're tamper proof.
-
Blockchain technology was invented in 2008 to create a digital currency.
-
The primary example that people are familiar with is probablt Bitcoin.
-
People are using it as digital cash.
-
But actually people have started to use it more and more
-
for things like their last will and testament,
-
or to declare that a diamond isn't a blood diamond, or even for sharing data.
-
Each block in a blockchain is computer code containing some form of information,
-
such as a contract, certificate of ownership, a statement of authenticity
-
or proof of a bank's financial transaction.
-
But each block of information in this computer database is securely connected,
-
or chained, to the other through a digital signature.
-
If you're trying to send money to relatives it can take 3, 5 or sometimes more days to
-
move the money.
-
And that's because we have to be very certain about where the money has gone to.
-
Before, technology didn't allow us to do that quickly and cheaply.
-
With this technology it would be faster and cheaper.
-
And it would be more secure because the bank has to digitally sign it
-
and would have an audit trail of every transaction that's ever happened.
-
As new information is added the length and complexity of the blockchain increases
-
and the computer database gets bigger with more and more people a part of it.
-
But if someone makes an unauthorised change
-
everyone else in the chain can see where it happened
-
and agree whether the change is valid or not.
-
For example you and I could decide that I was going to buy your house for £1,000.
-
And instead of hiring a lawyer
-
we could decide to register that onto a blockchain.
-
We would record a contract onto the blockchain that would indicate
-
I have agreed to add £1,000 today so that I could buy your house.
-
It would give you a public ledger that would be transparent,
-
so that anyone could see that I had agreed to pay.
-
I couldn't go back at a later date and change it to be £500.
-
And we could also do things like transfer the ownership through the title deeds.
-
And that would all be publically registered in the blockchain.
-
A distributed ledger is something that allows us to produce
-
a tamper-proof record of transactions onto a public ledger.
-
It's very similar to how an accounting ledger works.
-
But the idea behind a distributed ledger is that we get rid of the middle man.
-
We can use distributed ledger technology to help fishermen, for example, in Scotland
-
to prove the provenance of a piece of salmon.
-
We could say that it was definitely farmed at this time,
-
from this lake, and in this particular fashion.
-
And that could all be recorded transparently onto a distributed ledger,
-
which anyone would be able to track.
-
Everyone can have an identical copy of a distributed ledger.
-
This database of assets is shared across multiple sites.
-
While nothing is invulnerable to cyber attack, hacking it is extremely difficult.
-
If you had a distributed ledger with 1,000 computers on it
-
and you had stored a contract into that ledger,
-
and someone wanted to come in and hack and change some of the information,
-
in order to do that they couldn't just hack your computer,
-
they would have to hack every single other person's computer at the same time,
-
and change exactly the same piece of information.
-
The technology could also help small scale farmers.
-
For example, by registering the availability of their produce on a blockchain,
-
it could allow them to create economies of scale
-
to guarantee a supply chain to large scale customers.
-
Within government there are a number of potential applications for distributed ledgers
-
that could revolutionize the way it works and the delivery of public services.
-
I believe this technology will have a foundational impact on the way our society runs,
-
on the way our government runs, the way that we interact with one another -
-
not just in economic transations - but on a day-to-day basis.
-
I think blockchain technology is at least as significant
-
as the development of the internet.
-
If the internet bought us near instant digital communication,
-
then blockchain brings us near instant digital asset transfer,
-
asset movement and security of data movement.
-
That's really, really important to everything in financial services,
-
anything with property or ownership,
-
which is massive for the economy.