Hey everyone. Welcome back to the course. Now let's talk about Bitcoin and blockchain. There is a lot of confusion about Bitcoin and blockchain a new learner looking from the outset perspective, always feel that the Bitcoin is the blockchain, but that's not the case. Let's see how Bitcoin and blockchain are different from each other. Bitcoin is a major use case of blockchain.

Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency which is created and held digitally. So there is no physical form of Bitcoin it is digital cash. Bitcoin is also decentralized as no person, institution or Central Party controls the currency. Bitcoin was originated in 2009 to get rid of the third party payment processing intermediaries, so that the whole financial system could be made less costly and more efficient. blockchain is the technology behind Bitcoin Which makes the digital cash transactions more secure. In simple words, Bitcoin is kind of digital gold, just as gold is a limited resource available for use.

The same is with the Bitcoin. The number of Bitcoin tokens are limited, and that's why the price of bitcoin keeps on increasing. There can only be 21 million bitcoins in the market, and the distribution through mining has circulated almost more than 17 million Bitcoins. By the year 2140. No more bitcoins will be added to the chain because all the bitcoins would have already been mined, and miners won't receive any reward after the year 2140. blockchain is the technology behind Bitcoin and as we have discussed in the previous sessions blockchains inner core is a distributed database of records. each transaction over the blockchain is verified and stored inside a block and the block is confirmed over the blockchain using the consensus algorithm.

Transactions or data which is put over the blockchain cannot be replicated, and they are immutably stored for an indefinite period. Currently, the most famous blockchain applications are Bitcoin and aetherium chains. Now the blockchain technology is opening up to the world, and different use cases with massive potential disruptions are coming to notice. Concluding. blockchain is the technology behind Bitcoin and Bitcoin is a major use case for the technology or we can say Bitcoin is a mainstream manifestation of the potential which lies behind the blockchain. Bitcoin is a mirage.

Why do we say so? Bitcoin originated in 2009 and blockchain also came into being along with Bitcoin. bitcoins success grew with each passing year and people didn't realize the mean power behind it. One recent example of a university where I was acting as a guest lecturer. My first question was, how many of you know about blockchain? And out of 250 students, only four hands were up.

The second question I put up was how many of you know about Bitcoin and almost 240 students raised their hands. Bitcoin is acting as a smokescreen for blockchain, and people are not able to see the real power of the decentralized technology. Moreover, many countries and enterprises have banned cryptocurrencies, because of distributed and volatile behavior. Most of them are worried that by allowing the cryptocurrencies they might lose the stronghold. This ban on Bitcoin gives a bad name to blockchain to people think of blockchain as an illegal and insecure alienated technology. All these are the reasons why we say Bitcoin is a mirage, and it's hiding the real potential of the blockchain On the other hand, blockchain is a promising technology.

If we look beyond the use case of Bitcoin, we will realize the real potential of blockchain. There was a recent proof of concept on blockchain done by Walmart in collaboration with IBM, to implement hyper ledger blockchain solution to track their products. This was done in the light of a recent disease, which was found in the spinach across the United States of America. The supermarket's were not able to identify which batch of spinach catered to the illness. That's why they had to recall all the Spanish from the market. This was a costly process.

Moreover, it also hampered the respect in the market. Now by employing blockchain for tracking the products, Walmart has reduced the time taken to track a single product from 18 days to two seconds. They can also pinpoint on the actual batch of the product which is flawed or causes illness. Only recall that specific batch from the shells. There are many more real world examples where blockchain has helped to make data distribution and sharing more secure. Recently, Sarah Liana conducted elections on blockchain, where people cast their votes for specific candidates.

The benefits they achieved through blockchain were that all the votes were stored immutably so that nobody can tamper with the woods. Furthermore, the blockchain is transparent. So every citizen inside the country was able to see how the process of election was running, and which candidate was getting how many number of votes cryptocurrencies have given a bad name to the blockchain, but now the real blockchain potential has started to surface as per the Gartner hype curve. blockchain is already moving into the trough of disillusionment, and after a few years, we will have a profitable, stable curve. We are Most of the companies and enterprises will be employing blockchain to solve their problems. That's about Bitcoin versus blockchain.

Now, let's move on to the key characteristics of the blockchain. Thank you for attending this session. And if you have any queries do reach us at info at the rate we two blocks.com