Blockchain 101 – The Story of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
Since 2017, KVB has been holding KVB Journalists Class, featuring various speakers from different sectors and topics around the new economy.
KVB had outlook by venture capital firms in 2017 and Indonesia Blockchain Network in 2018 and this year in 2019, KVB presented Indonesia Blockchain Association.
The aim of KVB Journalists Class are to provide insights for journalists on the new things at the new economy. The purpose of providing insights is to support growth inclusion, aligned with the soul of KVB: Grow With Impact.
Following the opening by Dian Noeh Abubakar, Founder, CEO and Inclusion Driver of KVB who shared about the latest update of KVB, Muhammad Deivito Dunggio, the Executive Director of ABI, talked in front of a few journalists concerning blockchain, and here is the summary of it.
What is Blockchain?
Blockchain is composed of two components; blocks and chains. Blocks refer to the growing list of consecutive records.
Chains are the links between each blocks and thus making sure that each blocks are in order to one another.
Below are the characteristics of the blockchain technology:
Decentralized: Blockchain is a decentralized technology, capable of performing without intermediaries, or what they call a peer-to-peer technology.
Open and Distributed: able to record transactions between two parties in a verifiable and permanent way. As the records are kept by many parties, it is naturally almost impossible to change the records. This is because one needs to modify the data of all “ledger owner” in order to modify any information kept by the blocks.
Cryptocurrencies are virtual currencies utilizing the blockchain technology, meaning that any transaction made are recorded and public. Also, you can track down each individual unit of cryptocurrencies, meaning that they are not duplicatable and therefore reliable.
Timeline of Blockchain
Oct 2008: Whitepaper concerning Bitcoin was released to the public.
Jan 2009: First ever block was mined.
Feb 2011: Silkroad, an anonymous marketplace using Bitcoin as the intermediary, was launched.
Oct 2013: Silkroad was closed down by FBI, due to the illegal nature of goods sold.
Nov 2017: Bitcoin at its peak value; Rp. 297 Juta.
Jan 2018: Bank Indonesia warning Indonesians not to buy, sell, or trade virtual currencies.
Oct 2018: Cryptocurrencies are declared as crypto assets and thus registered as a legal commodity in Indonesia.
As seen above, Indonesia took ten (10) years to legalize the trading of cryptocurrencies, which is quite slow on the uptake.
As of the time of this article was written, it is still illegal to utilize cryptocurrencies as a currency or a medium of exchange.
Next Steps
Currently, although not as before, blockchain and cryptocurrencies are still in its infancy stage, with technologies such as smart contracts being added regularly to the original architecture in order to improve its performance.
Once it is more reliable, blockchain will be ubiquitous and cryptocurrency has the possibility to be the next form of currency.
