newspeak

If you know what a blockchain (also block chain) is, you probably learned of it through reading about bitcoin, which uses it. Wikipedia’s definition of a blockchain is useful:

A block chain or blockchain is a distributed database based on the bitcoin protocol that maintains a continuously growing list of records hardened against tampering and revision, even by operators of the data store’s nodes. The primary means by which this is accomplished is through the use of a timestamp server which, batching recent valid transactions into “blocks,” and “taking a hash of a block of items to be timestamped and widely publishing the hash… proves that the data must have existed at the time.” The timestamp of each block includes the prior timestamp, “forming a chain, with each additional timestamp reinforcing the ones before it,”^[1] thus giving the database type its name. Each blockchain record is enforced cryptographically and hosted on machines working as data store nodes.^[2]

Source: Wikipedia retrieved 18 Dec. 2015 10:26 (-0500UTC)

The point here is that a blockchain can be used in ways beyond bitcoin. Such as for traditional money lenders and managers for whom blockchain answers several issues, not the least of them being security, usability, but also–and importantly–an interested, global community of developers. That the technology is open source is hardly incidental; in fact, it is essential.

New open ledger project to transform the way business transactions are conducted around the world

Source: Linux Foundation Unites Industry Leaders to Advance Blockchain Technology