MIT 15.S12 Blockchain and Money Note (Lec 1)

Fun fact: Pizza Hut in 1994 is the first online sale.

Concept of cryptography: Communications in the presence of adversaries. (Examples: )

There were lots of failed cases before Bitcoin, the core riddle is to create a P2P way to transfer money in a decentralised mechanism. Satoshi Nakamoto (中本聪) solved the riddle and published a paper

1. What is blockchain technology?
   1. The history could date back to early 1990s, the 2 important components of blockchain is Hash Function and asymmetric cryptography
   2. Conceptually speaking, it is the technology that could verifiably move ‘data’ on a decentralised network.
2. The Role of Money
   1. Medium of exchange
   2. Store of value
   3. Unit of account
3. The role of Finance
   1. Moving, Allocation and Pricing (Valuation)

The reason why Alipay (China) and Mpesa (Kenya) are successfully is that they are many unbanked people, there are still 1.7 billion people in the world that are unbanked (2018).

Traditional financial sector v.s. Blockchain and the issues : mainly in the Privacy, Security, Interoperability and Governance.

Global Capital Market:

1. Global Equity Market: $ 80 trillion (2018)
2. Global Debt & Bond MarkeT:$ 250 trillion (2018)
3. Global Holding of Gold: $ 7 trillion (2018)
4. Global Crypto Currency cap: $ 1.75 (2021)