20190708@Mat-逐字稿

Hello listeners, welcome once again.This is me Mat Clark with an episode about a thing called blockchain.Now, blockchain is a name, a word,a thing that keeps appearing in the news. The name keeps popping up in the media.

I keep seeing articles about this, but I will be honest. Until I wrote this episode, I didn't really know what it was. So don't worry, don't feel stupid if you think,oh, I know nothing about this blockchain thing, because I knew nothing about this blockchain thing untilI at down yesterday and prepared this article by

researching and reading all about blockchain.

And 'll be honest again, I'm still not one hundred percent sure exacly what it is.

So at the end of the episode, if you think, um, I still don't realy understand it,don't worry, because I don't fully understand it.

But lets try.

At its most basic level, blockchain. It's just a chain of blocks. When we say the words block and chain, we are actually talking about digital information/ digital data. And that is the block, the piece of information.

And this block of information is stored in a public database or across a network of public databases. This is called the chain.And that's why the thing is called

blockchain.

So first of all, let's have a look at the artice,and then we'll try to understand why blockchain is important.

So the article begins with the title Blockchain: Having an existential crisis.

An existential crisis is usually when a person questions the meaning of their life,the purpose of their life and of existence itself.When someone starts asking questions like, what is the purpose of my life? What am I here for? Why do I exist?That is an existential crisis.

So if we talk about a thing such as a type of technology like blockchain, if I say blockchain is having an existential crisis, then I mean that the purpose of that thing is not clear.The function is not clear, not obvious.

There is some doubt or maybe some debate about why it exists. And I think we can say that that is true right now about blockchain. People know It's important,but we don't quite know what we are going to use it for.

The article then tells us that blockchain is the digital technology behind many of the world's emerging cryptocurrencies.

So a cryptocurrency,of course,is an alternative form of payment,an alternativeway of paying, an alternative to cash and credit cards.A different way of paying for things.

When we talk about cryptocurrencies, uh, we often talk about bitcoin, bitcoin is the most famous one. And the technology behind many of these cryptocurrencies is blockchain.

So this allows you to send digital payment to another person or another company without using a third party,such as a bank. So basically,blockchain,if we use blockchain for payments, I can pay you money, but we don't need to use any middle software, or we don't need to use a third party such as a bank. I can payyou directly using a digital invisible currency.

So cryptocurrency is the actual payment system.And blockchain is thetechnology or the software behind it, the technology that makes it happen.

The article then tells us that in reality it's nothing more than a digital record of financial transactions backed up across a string of computers.

So in reality,the reality is that/the true situation is that blockchain is nothing more than..

If something is nothing more than something else. It's the same meaning as only,just.

The rain yesterday wasn't heavy. It was nothing more than a shower./ It wasonly a shower./It was just a shower.

>The second film was nothing more than a copy of the first film.

Say blockchain is only/it's just a digital rcord of these digital payments. It's nothing more than a digital record.

The digital payments,the transactions are the blocks,and the record is backedup /it is stored on a string of computers/across a string of computers, and that is the chain. So a string of means a group or series of related things, or events.

He has made a string of speeches this yeal

> The writer has produced a string of/a series/a group of detective novels.

The article then tells us that this digital financial history expands, it grows, it gets bigger as new transactions or blocks are added to it. And this forms of publiclyavailable chain, hence the name blockchain

So this payment history expands. It gets bigger as more information is added.

Obviously,as new payments happen or as new events in the chain happen.

These are blocks and these are added in everything grows.

But why all the hype?

Hype is when something is advertised and discussed a lot in newspapers, in the media and in a way that seems to attract our attention.

> There's been a lot of hype around his latest film.

Despite all the media hype, I found the book rather disappointing.

So why is there a lot of hype excited publicity around blockchain? Why are so many people excited about it? We'll find out later.

The article also asks, why are people heralding blockchain as a technology with the potential to be as disruptive as the birth of the internet? Why are people claiming that blockchain will be as disruptive?

That's important as the internet or as disruptive as the internet.If a technology is disruptive, it can change the way we do things. It can change the way an industry does things. It would have a big impact on the way we do many things.

The internet was very disruptive,and people are claiming that blockchain will be equally disruptive. We will look at some of the reasons later.

The article reminds us that blockchain is sill in its embryonic stages/in its infancy. It's very early stages. It's a very new technology,it's very young.

So it also tells us about investors and the way that investors are throwing outrageous sums of money into any startup companies with blockchain in theirname.

| So if you throw money into something, if you throw money at something, you| spend large amounts of money very quickly on that thing.

So investors are eagerly putting lots of money into any companies that sound like they are related to blockchain. So these investors are predicting that,they are speculating that blockchain will be very, very important in the future.

The article tells us that some tech experts, some technology experts arespeculating that blockchain could become as important as the internet.

They're speculating. They are guessing that blockchain might become asimportant as the internet.

Now,that is quite a big claim.

lmagine that: as important as the internet. We use the internet for almost

everything in almost every aspect of our lives. Some experts are claiming that blockchain will be the same,as important as the internet. It will change the way|we do almost everything in our lives.

Now,that's an enormous claim. And we'll look at that later.

Back to the article.It tells us that in the early 90s hardly anyone really understood the internet and only a handful of people accurately predicted its future dominant role in our lives

So in the early nineties, when the internet was in its embryonic stages, when it was in its infancy, when it was very young, very few people understood it.Not many people truly understood how the internet changed our lives.

I remember, I was very young and I was attending a lecture about the internet in 1991. I remember this quite clearly. I can remember l was there with my friendand we listened to the teacher.

The teacher was talking about an invisible telephone line that will contain all the information in the world. And we would just need to press buttons.And all this information could be sent to a screen in our house.

In 1991, that sounded like a ridiculous idea.We actually thought the teacher was insane, a crazy person. But look what happened. And that's why we need to becareful.

If we dismiss blockchain, we can't just say it sounds like a crazy idea, because in 1991, the internet sounded like an impossible, crazy idea.

The article tells us that the believers are making some extravagant claims-that,Blockchain is the solution to Brexit, to our health problems and a way to end world poverty. To bring everyone out of poverty around the world.

| Some are even sugesting that Blockchain will help us fall in love.

How will it do this? Well, we just don't know yet.

The final sentence of the article is that the reality is that blockchain is just another new technology,trying to decide why it actually exists. It's having an existential crisis.

We don't know how important it will be.We don't know exactly what we will use it for.

Blockchain is another new technology trying to decide why it exists,just,like the,internet in 1991.

Okay,lets try to understand blockchain in a bit more detail. As we know the blocks on the blockchain are made of digital pieces of information.They have three parts.

Let's look at these three parts. The blocks store information like the date, the time and the amount that you spend.And these blocks store information about who is involved in the process.

If I'm paying you, it will contain information about me and information about you.

But instead of using our real names, it will use a unique digital signature, kind of like a nickname, kind of like a user name.

So the blockchain will,store information about you and me, but it won't store our real information, our real names and our real personal data.It will use a digital signature.

The final part is that each block has a unique code.And the unique code makes it easy for us to see the difference between this block and that block. We can tell them apart.We can see how the diferent blocks represent different events.

And of course,the blocks are publicly available for everyone to view,even you.

Anyone can view the contents of blockchain at any time. Once a block of information is added to the blockchain,it becomes very dificult to edit and impossible to delete.

Each computer in the blockchain network has its own copy of the blockchain, which means that there are thousands or even millions of copies of the same| blockchain.

| So that's how it works. It sounds quite simple, but what would we use it for? Well,the goal of blockchain is to allow digital information to be recorded and

distributed, but not edited or deleted.

So first of all,it can be used to regulate digital currencies/cryptocurrencies, like| bit coin

Of course, when it comes to printed money, the money that we are used to / cash,| these are regulated by a bank, but bitcoin is not controlled by anyone.

| So transactions and payments made in bitcoin are verified and requlated by a computer network using blockchain we already know about. this is already happening.

The blockchain is also quite a reliable way of sorting other types of data,not just| digital payments.

Blockchain can be used to store out medical records and a complete medical history.A health history for everyone could be stored on blockchains, which could then be stored across a network of computers. So we can see exactly the complete breakdown of our health care and medical history.

Property records, who owns what property. Now, this is quite a diffcult area because today using paper information/paper based data, It's very dfficult to know who owns what property.

People buy a property,they lose the contract,they move.No one knows who owns that building over there. But if all property records were stored on blockchain, then it would be easy to see exactly who owns what property.

It will be easy to see who owns every building around us.

Business contracts. When two companies sign a contract to work together.

Nowadays, there is a process where the contract, they get sent backwards,backwards and forwards. And then there are paper versions and both companies have to sign the paper version.

Many people believe the blockchain will replace this system that all business contracts in future will use blockchain.

Why? Because as we said already,the information cannot be edited. So once It's been created,It's set, it cannot be edited and it cannot be deleted.And thats exactly what you need with a business contract.

Companies such as food and drink producers, agricultural companies, ood manufacturers,they might use blockchain in the future to show all the materials and processes they used to make their products, to show the customers that their products are truly organic or environmentally friendly, because the

customers will be able to look at the production history of the products on ablockchain.

Many people believe that this will be one of the most important uses of

blockchain in the future for companies to show information about their products,information that we will have to trust and believe, because blockchain cannot be edited and it cannot be deleted.

One of the biggest advantages of blockchain is that it is not written by humans.

So there are very few errors and it can't be altered.

One problem with blockchain today is that I's still quite slow as a process and it cannot handle a lot of trafc

The reasons why are quite technical and diffiult to explain. But this shouldn't bea problem because if you remember the internet of 1990,1991, it was also slowand it couldn't handle a lot of traffic It was actually quite rubbish. But look where it went.

Look at what we have now. So we shouldn't look at blockchain and say, oh it's slow and it can't handle a lot of traffic because that's exactly how the internet

started. I think what we have to do is we have to prepare for the blockchain revolution.

It's no longer a question of if the blockchain revolution happens, I think It's aquestion of when will the blockchain revolution happen?Maybe It's already here,And that brings me to the end of this episode.And as usual, thanks very much for listening. I'll be back next week with more news.And until then,this is me,Mat Clark signing off and saying goodbye.Goodbye.