Crypto Currency and Bitcoin is distributed immutable Ledger with consensus mechanism called block chain

Important Characteristics- It has a distributed consensus system for reliability of it's ledger which can work even if there is no trust amongst the controlling entities (achieved through POW-proof of work or mining)

Drawbacks-

1. Slow (7 transactions per second Today's requirement 100,000 Tx/sec)

2. Difficult for software upgrade

3. Privacy issues

Some of the core technologies and uses are mentioned below

HASH FUNCTION

Hashing is used with a database to enable items to be retrieved more quickly. Hashing can also be used in the encryption and decryption of digital signatures. The hash function transforms the digital signature, then both the hash value and signature are sent to the receiver. The receiver uses the same hash function to generate the hash value and then compares it to that received with the message. If the hash values are the same, it is likely that the message was transmitted without errors.

One example of a hash function is called folding. This takes an original value, divides it into several parts, then adds the parts and uses the last four remaining digits as the hashed value or key.

Another example is called digit rearrangement. This takes the digits in certain positions of the original value, such as the third and sixth numbers, and reverses their order. It then uses the number left over as the hashed value.

It is nearly impossible to determine the original number based on a hashed value, unless the algorithm that was used is known.

Asymmetric Encryption

Asymmetric encryption is a type of encryption that uses two separates yet mathematically related keys to encrypt and decrypt data. The public key encrypts data while its corresponding private key decrypts it. This is why it’s also known as public key encryption, public key cryptography, and asymmetric key encryption.

The public key is open to everyone. Anyone can access it and encrypt data with it. However, once encrypted, that data can only be unlocked by using the corresponding private key. As you can imagine, the private key must be kept secret to keep it from becoming compromised. So, only the authorized person, server, machine, or instrument has access to the private key.

Merkel Tree

A Merkle tree is a hash-based data structure that is a generalization of the hash list. It is a tree structure in which each leaf node is a hash of a block of data, and each non-leaf node is a hash of its children. Typically, Merkle trees have a branching factor of 2, meaning that each node has up to 2 children.

Merkle trees are used in distributed systems for efficient data verification. They are efficient because they use hashes instead of full files. Hashes are ways of encoding files that are much smaller than the actual file itself. Currently, their main uses are in peer-to-peer networks such as Tor, Bitcoin, and Git.

Block Chain Technology for Financial Services

R3-Corda

IBM

Consensys

Permission less versus permissioned block chain

Regulations and Compliance

Block Chain Tecnology BeyondCryptonCoins

NFT- Non Fungible Token-

ENS- Ethereum Name Services

What Is a Smart Contract?

A smart contract is a self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. The code and the agreements contained therein exist across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network. The code controls the execution, and transactions are trackable and irreversible.