Coins and paper money are history. In the new reality, currency will consist of only digital series of letters and numbers, or ‘cryptocurrency’. Soon, there will be no more banks. At least, this is what some would have us believe. Is this really true? And, what is the bank’s role if cryptocurrency accounts for a larger proportion of money flows?

Bitcoins are probably the best known form of lbank cryptocurrency. The basis of this new currency system consists of a huge public ledger in which special software updates all transactions automatically. A set of accounts, in fact. A copy of these accounts is on every computer forming part of the bitcoin network. There are thousands of them. Six times an hour, the system adds a file or ‘block’ to the accounts containing all the new payments. These blocks collectively form a chain, so this is why the technology is known as ‘block chain’. Each computer has to agree to a new payment, and the technology blocks any transaction that is not correct in advance. This means that no human checks are needed, and the question of whether a person is trustworthy or not is no longer an issue. The technology actually takes over the human role of supervisor. What’s more, every transaction is public and can be checked, although it is anonymous, thus safeguarding privacy. Payments can only be made with the unique digital signature that every bitcoin owner has.

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