Blockchain technology is low cost transaction technology that obviates the need of intermediaries which add to the cost. The first blockchain was Bitcoin which appeared soon after the financial crisis of 2008. On October 30, 2008, someone who called himself Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper describing a digital currency. The title of the paper was ‘Bitcoin: A Peer -to-Peer Electronic cash system.’ It is still available at https:// bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper. The Bitcoin network was launched on January 3, 2009 with each bitcoin priced at $0.0008. Mysteriously, on April 23, 2011, Nakamoto sent a farewell email to a fellow Bitcoin developer. He has not been heard since.

Satoshi is believed to have said, ‘If you don’t believe it (Bitcoin), or don’t get it, I don’t have the time to convince you, sorry.’

A blockchain is a digital ledger that allows parties to transact without a central authority or intermediary. Here the transactions are grouped in blocks which are chained cryptographically. It makes the system tamper- proof. It creates indisputable history of transactions.

Blockchain is not a new technology but an innovative way of using existing technologies Blockchain is underpinned by a symmetric key encryption, hash values, Merkle trees and peer-to-peer networks.

Electronic communication remained in silos before the development of TCP/IP protocol. The development and maintenance of blockchain made the communication open, distributed and shared . A team of volunteers around the world maintains the core software for blockchain, just as TCP/IP and other open source web software is maintained.

TCP/IP enabled email and instant messaging. Similarly, smart contracts are enabled by blockchain. It allows trusted transactions and agreements among any two parties without the need for a central authority.