Building Confidence in Blockchain: Investing in Cryptocurrency and a Decentralized Future by Carter Woetzel

CHAPTER 1
BLOCKCHAIN & VENTRE À TERRE

“Sorry to be a wet blanket. Writing a description for this thing for
general audiences is bloody hard.”
—Satoshi Nakamoto, anonymous creator of Bitcoin
When I first set out to describe blockchain in a simple fashion, I
spent months poring over the original research papers: David
Chaum’s 1977 dissertation, Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 white paper,
Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum whitepaper, and a list that could go on for
quite a while.
I wasn’t satisfied. I extended my search to
simplified explanations: an example of this was the University of
California Berkeley’s 2015 “Blockchain Technology—Beyond Bitcoin”
paper.
Even YouTube videos such as “Blockchain Explained Simply”
contained a surprising amount of chaos in comment sections.
People didn’t seem to understand. Even if they did, they didn’t have
the confidence to echo it back at others.
The realization during my research was this: we are not taught the
concept nor logistics of ledgers, and because blockchain is just a
radically futuristic ledger, the dilemma the majority of people
encountered on their first attempt to learn about blockchain became
rapidly apparent.
We know how to go to the gas station and purchase a soda, but we
don’t really stop and think how this transaction is recorded by the
gas station, the bank, and all of the intermediaries that take a slice of
any given transaction. At best, the average person tracks how the
balance in their account/ledger increases or decreases. We are stuck
viewing the world using a single-ledger paradigm.
Understanding ledgers is the first step in comprehending blockchain.
A ledger is a living record of financial transactions. You use
ledgers every single day and other ledgers are at play other than your
own account that are an integral part in confirming your own account

Building Confidence in Blockchain: Investing in Cryptocurrency and a Decentralized Future by Carter Woetzel