Blockchain for Dummies (IBM Limited Edition) by Manav Gupta

Welcome to Blockchain For Dummies, IBM Limited Edition, your guide to all things blockchain for business. It has been said that blockchain will do for transactions what the Internet did for information. What that means is that it allows increased trust and efficiency in the exchange of almost anything. Blockchain can profoundly change how the world works. If you’ve ever bought a house, you probably had to sign a huge stack of papers from a variety of different stakeholders to make that transaction happen. If you’ve ever registered a vehicle, you may understand how painful that process can be. I won’t even get started on how challenging it can be to track your medical records. Blockchain, most simply defined as a shared, immutable ledger, has the potential to be the technology that redefines those processes and many others. To be clear, when I talk about blockchain, I’m not talking about bitcoin. I’m talking about the underlying digital foundation that supports applications such as bitcoin. But the reaches of blockchain extend far beyond bitcoin.