IBM's "Super Ledger": Popularizing Bitcoin's Accounting Technology

Bitcoin has gradually transformed from a new technology that was hostile to the traditional financial industry to a technology that everyone uses.

This week, IBM announced on its official website that they have launched a set of standards for "data block chain" technology and a "Hyperledger" project.

IBM claims that the standard and plan will enable the core accounting technology of this virtual currency to be applied to more fields.

The "data block chain" is the core of the Bitcoin electronic currency system. More and more traditional financial institutions have found that its encryption algorithm can reduce the cost and risk of bookkeeping - no third-party institution can access the information of traders, and all transaction information cannot be changed once it is deposited in the user's account.

In the past one or two years, more than 10 mainstream financial institutions have been trying to use blockchain technology to transform their own databases, including JP Morgan, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), Citibank, credit card brand MasterCard, etc.

Therefore, it is not surprising that IBM has received large orders before the plan is released, such as the London Stock Exchange and Japanese securities companies.

In other areas, some startups have thought about using digital ledgers to record music downloads and calculate royalties to be distributed to artists, without relying on an agent to manage the entire process.

IBM spokesperson Holli Haswell gave an example from the logistics field. "Cargo damage is common during transportation. The container will record the temperature and transportation conditions, and which batch of goods was damaged. All information will be fed back to a distributed ledger." Especially in international trade, it is very useful to find the contaminated batch of goods and settle accounts with the logistics agent.

What other fields can use this decentralized distributed record-keeping method? IBM's "Hyperledger" project is an open source platform based on the Linux system. At present, it mainly improves the compatibility and running speed of this technology, and also includes the development of some tools that are suitable for more other fields.

Currently, 35 software programmers have shared 44,000 lines of code on Github, with fewer than 500 followers. But here are all ideas for future applications.

But don't forget that IBM is still the company that sells hardware with commercial software. Companies whose data runs at frequencies close to radio waves must configure IBM's mainframes.

The IBM Garages in four countries will also organize developers to design mobile applications. The 23 design centers that IBM has previously set up around the world will also be put to good use.

Can this technology make money? IBM Vice President Arvind Krishna said that by the end of this year, there may be a consideration.