Last week’s table talk was about blockchain and cryptocurrency. I went into this conversation not knowing anything about this other than the words bitcoin and an awareness of the excitement that the value had increased a lot suddenly. I have a few friends who were into buying bitcoin, so I also knew that they transactions would take a significant amount of time to occur.

The first thing we talked about was blockchain. I did not know what blockchain was. I learned it was essentially no different from a register, where each transaction was added to secure list. These are open ledgers, whose data cannot be altered in any way without affecting numerous other blocks as well. Each block of data also contains the timestamp of the transaction, the transaction data and a cryptographic hash of the previous blocks data.

We also spent a little time talking about bitcoin and ethereum, and other types of cryptocurrencies. I think it is interesting that people have invested in a, what I think seems to be a stock, whose value is only based upon how many people are invested into it. While if you play the timing correctly, you can make a good profit, you can just as easily lose money without much notice.

One thing I found interesting about bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies is that no one really owns it. [This was confusing to me at first, well it still is, because how did it start if no one owns it? How is it promoted? Who ‘mines’ for the bitcoin or gets value from the worth increasing?] This means that it cannot be regulated like usual. Rather than regulating a company, the consumers would have to be regulated.

This was an interesting talk, and it definitely sparked some interest and numerous questions about cryptocurrency, but I probably will avoid investing in it still.