The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued a report titled “Blockchain Technology Overview.” The report, intended to provide a high-level technical overview, discusses the application of blockchain technology to electronic currency in depth, and also discusses its broader applications.

“We want to help people understand how <a href="#">Blockchains</a> work so that they can appropriately and usefully apply them to technology problems,” said NIST computer scientist Dylan Yaga, who is one of the authors of the report. “It’s an introduction to the things you should understand and think about if you want to use blockchain.” According to Yaga, blockchain technology is a powerful new paradigm for business.

[bs-quote quote="You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven't been able to do it." style="style-19" align="left" author_name="Alan Greenspan" author_job="American Economist" author_avatar="%%bf_product_demo_media_url:{media.primary.quote-avatar}:'full'%%"]

The problem is we have handed governments the ability to lock us up, take away our belongings and even kill us, in exchange for a reliable and predictable legal structure, he says. Blockchain technology is the first real effort to expand on that trust model with any success. That is not to say there is no need for blockchain technology in the developed world, says Crosbie; it’s just that the use cases in the West are not as compelling. We already have good banking and court systems in the U.S., for example, that support most people’s needs. If blockchain technology does establish itself in the developing world, life there would look a lot more like life in the Western world, says Crosbie. As an example, he tells how he recently had to file a renewal for a limited liability company. He was able to do his research, collect details and fill out the forms online. “I did it all from my chair,” he said.



Litecoin has been around a lot longer than Ethereum, but Ether has grown in value far quicker. Then there are smart-contracts to consider. In this guide we’ll break down the key differences between these two altcoins, to give you the best basis for your own cryptocurrency investments. With all the furor surrounding Bitcoin and its contemporaries’ massive value spike throughout — and particularly at the end — of 2017, one of the biggest concerns for those looking to buy cryptocurrency is whether they’ll retain their value. The short answer to that is nobody knows. Cryptocurrencies are incredibly volatile and can rise and crash tens of percentage points in a single day, but some are proven more than others and may be more stable investments for the future.

Other factors worth considering in this debate are that Litecoin has a definitive 84 million token maximum, meaning that at some point in the future there will be no new Litecoin created. Ether, on the other hand, will continue to be awarded for mining into the foreseeable future. The developers may one day cap it, but that has yet to happen. The scarcity brought about by a limitation on the number of tokens could mean that Litecoin ends up being a more valuable cryptocurrency in the future.

That’s why over the past year we’re seen Ethereum become the most traded cryptocurrency in the world, with more than a million transactions taking place some days. In comparison, Litecoin handles just over 50,000 transactions a day, while even Bitcoin handles 230,000 or so. Ethereum is trading hands with incredible frequency.