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my name is Tegan Klein I'm the
co-founder of Edge and node the initial
team behind the graph and with the graph
what Google does for the web the graph
does for blockchains and organizing data
my name is Cynthia Haas and I'm the
director of the world of women
Foundation world of women is a
collection of 10 000 women all across
different backgrounds variety of skins
traits and we are a community that
Champions inclusion and diversity in the
web through space my name is Charlie Lee
I'm the creator of Litecoin one of the
alternative currents fees to bitcoin I
was playing around with the Bitcoin code
base and decided to create my own
cryptocurrency and it was a fun side
project and it took off
when you buy something with a credit
card when your groceries are labeled
organic when you see verified identity
on social media or when you vote all of
these things they depend on trust how do
you know that the money was transferred
that the food is actually organic that
the person is real or that your vote is
counted ultimately you trust records
managed by Banks companies and
governments
but these days many people wonder if
they can trust companies governments or
any form of centralized power with the
rise of misinformation what if we could
build a system of trust that didn't
depend on a central entity what if we
could keep track of things like money or
property in a way that anyone could
audit the data without putting a company
or government in charge
that's possible today using the
technology called blockchain
blockchain is a new way of storing
information across internet where
everyone can participate with blockchain
data can be decentralized and
distributed nobody owns a blockchain but
everybody can use it and verify the
information on it this technology is the
Innovation behind cryptocurrencies like
Bitcoin it has other potential use cases
which we'll get to in a later video but
first let's look at how the problems of
trust have been solved in the past
since the earliest of human societies
we've invented different ways of
building trust by keeping track of
information and transactions
like who owns this Farm
how much do I owe you for the milk what
are the laws of the land
humans started using shells or precious
rocks to keep track of transactions and
these became the earliest forms of
currency as we moved from tribes to
villages to cities we needed to keep
track of property and laws this led to
the early invention of numbers in
writing
isn't that incredible
we didn't invent numbers for math class
we didn't invent the alphabet to write
books
we invented them to keep track of land
livestock debts and taxes
and of course we've come a long way
since then currency has evolved from
shells to coins to banknotes to Digital
Data writing has evolved from clay
tablets to paper to digital formats
along with inventing writing and numbers
we've also invented a new way to
establish trust because all of these
ways of preserving records They still
depend on trust that's why the laws of
the land were set in stone to make sure
nobody would change them
but how do you trust something even if
it's set in stone
for example you might have a clay tablet
that says you own 100 cows but how do I
know that you didn't make that number up
that's why we invented trusted seals
stamps and signatures
and with all of these inventions we've
authorized and put our trust in a
limited group of people organizations or
governments with the special power to
verify our records that's the one thing
that has never changed over thousands of
years and new technologies these systems
only work if we trust the organizations
and authorities that verify the records
and this brings us back to the
blockchain
blockchain is the first technology that
allows us to record information without
needing to trust a central Authority
it's a digital way to store and verify
information that is set in stone without
needing a stone or a seal or a bank or a
government the information on a
blockchain is saved on a distributed
network of computers so long as these
computers are independently managed in
theory no individual or organization can
take down the network or corrupt it
this is like a form of writing that
can't be counterfeit or destroyed it
enables a new form of trust the first
use is Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a digital currency that
safely tracks transactions in ownership
without needing to put trust in any bank
or government but that's only one
example a blockchain could potentially
be used to track ownership of real
estate to establish contracts to
authenticate documents and to verify
document was created on a certain date
it's now theoretically possible to do
all of these things and
blockchain technology still has a long
way to reach its full potential and its
future is a topic of regular debate some
believe that this is the future with the
potential to democratize who has power
and authority in human societies others
think it is a giant scam with no other
purpose in the rest of this video series
we'll look at how this technology works
and then we'll explore different points
of view
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us
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