Bitcoin Revolution, not just the new currency.

The development of Bitcoin has shown that it is by no means a tidal wave of potential energy--on the contrary, more and more diverse applications are being developed for this technology.

The world has entered the "Bitcoin 2.0 Era": The technology of going central has penetrated the digital currency into other areas. Block chains make it possible to center ownership, storage, trading, and information processing-which many believe is the core value of Bitcoin technology.

In May this year, Ledra Capital, an investment firm in New York, made an opinion poll on Twitter: Where do you think block chains can be used? True, currency trading is at the top of the list, but it follows: stocks, bonds, mortgages, leases, gun licences, contracts, voting, bets, trademarks, data stores, domain names, identity certificates ...

Robby Dermody, co-founder of Counterparty, said bitcoin could be used to buy coffee, but this is not the app for its lore. For ordinary consumers, the sense of bitcoin is similar to a credit card, but the application of the lore must be an overwhelming advantage in other areas. ”

In the industry, a group of developers and entrepreneurs have seen this, for instance, Dominik Zynis, who had been in charge of business development in Mastercoin, said: "We should be concerned about 120% of the ' Bitcoin 2.0 era ', and Bitcoin has redefined the way we live WEB services online." He believes that the new era of internet companies is creating the next generation of "safe and scalable Internet applications" – they have a greater advantage in dealing with hackers, fraud, and privacy issues.

Bitcoin – as a brand new virtual currency – is still evolving, whether it's product code or institutional and consumer acceptance. At the same time, the impact of the central technology is accelerating radiation. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said: "I think it is time, now we have enough virtual economy building, these block chain, we have enough power to open a strong revolution, the structure of the Internet and society to a new level." ”

The rise of the central exchange

A year ago, Overstock.com's CEO, Patrick Byrne, publicly expressed his support for the digital currency, and recently disclosed that the company was thinking of a virtual security (cryptosecurity) So that companies that need to raise capital can use its system to raise money. July 29, Overstock published an article pointing out that 12 organizations have been online or are building a central exchange. Among them, counterparty, NXT, bitshares exchanges have entered a period of good operation--counterparty in January on the line of the business, NXT Asset Exchange is May, BitShare platform than NXT two weeks earlier. The three products have their own characteristics, but they follow one principle in terms of trading: Users do not need a centralized third party to create and trade assets.

The company stock is a typical product on these platforms: in NXT, more than 220 stocks have been born; Virtual money trader Coinomat also unveiled a new product: Paying dividends of 1.5% of corporate week profits for shareholders ' stock originators. These are the best examples of automatic recognition and processing of trading contracts based on block chains.

Other applications include: Digital Tangible Trust, which offers a tradable, gold-backed virtual asset-a class of asset types that are growing rapidly--mypowers The digital ghost allows people to buy and sell artist and organization brand Equity (Brand Equity).

It can be speculated that the future trends of virtual assets include: connecting virtual assets to physical assets-for example, there is a car whose key can be traded on a central exchange in the form of a token, if you are a buyer, you can download it to a mobile phone or a bracelet, and then unlock the car directly. In addition, there is a proliferation of DAC (decentralized autonomous company, to the center of Self-Government)--they finance the operations of block chains and the rewards for shareholders.

In addition to assets, there are people trying to make chunk chains more suitable for storing data. Namecoin is building a central domain registration mechanism that can be dissociated from ICANN (the Internet name and digital address distribution agency)-Some believe this is the second largest application of block-chain technology outside of virtual currency. Recently, the same vision of Maidsafe, Storj has completed the financing--maidsafe dedicated to the use of Bitcoin block chain to create a fully-centralized internet, Storj on August 20 to complete the virtual public sales, access to 910 Bitcoin, it provides users with similar Dropbox, Google Drive online storage services, but through a distributed network, but also in the business model innovation, STORJ allows users to buy the network also has a surplus of hard disk space, but also allows users to sell their unused storage space.

Storj founder Shawn Wilkinson and a bitcoin developer affirmed the value of the block-chain application expansion, saying: "Bitcoin is probably just 5 billion to 6 billion dollars in the industry, but you can use its technology in ready-made industries and areas, such as cloud storage, The latter is worth 150 billion dollars now. He also said that with the help of Storj products, people can be divorced from traditional regulation, public ideas, price fluctuations, and so on.

Side chain, tree chain, and a question about block chain

Another question about the block chain is, what form should be used to develop its expansion applications? On this issue, Ethereum and Bitshares gave their own response: Ethereum set up their own, brand new block chain, which runs on its operating platform. But Gavin Andresen, the core developer of Bitcoin, disagrees: "Bitcoin has created global currencies and distributed networks, and there is no need to reinvent the wheel." Combining real-world information with Bitcoin is an imaginative place. ”

Bitshares uses a mechanism called DPOS (delegated Proof-of-stake), which allows users to delegate their voting rights to 101 delegates, who will be able to update Bitshares's block chain-a mechanism that is said to effectively reduce "51% Attack.

There are also "bitcoin 2.0" companies trying to make the scale of block chains more efficient, but less centralized. For example, the Treechain concept of Peter Todd, the core developer of Bitcoin, is what he thought of in the window company Viacoin. The side chain (Sidechain) represents another sound--allowing people to add new attributes to the former by interacting with the chain of existing blocks.