Blockchain: A Primer

Gerald Dwyer

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The Bitcoin blockchain is the primary innovation in Bitcoin that makes it practical. Blockchains have applications in many contexts other than cryptocurrencies. This note is an introduction to blockchains that requires no prior knowledge, including of Bitcoin. Blockchains are ledgers of transactions kept by a set of participants, none of which is accorded special status as the “correct one.” Instead, agreement is reached by a process of consensus. I show how this works for Bitcoin, discuss applications in many alternative settings and provide some detail about a very different proof-of-concept application of blockchains by the Japan Exchange Group.

Keywords: Blockchain; public distributed ledger; Bitcoin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G10 G18 G21 G23 G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict, nep-ino and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/76562/1/MPRA_paper_76562.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Blockchain: a primer (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:76562

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().