It could be a big year for bitcoin and blockchain technology. The blockchain in particular is gaining a lot of supporters. Think of blockchain as a database which keeps track of bitcoin transactions. It has proven to provide high integrity. For example, if you have ten bitcoins, it is impossible to give ten bitcoins to more than one person. (Unlike checks. If you have ten dollars in your account, you can write as many ten-dollar checks as you want.)

Blockchain technology can provide high integrity to many things, not just bitcoin. IBM, Cisco and Intel are collaborating with a number of banks and other companies to develop an “enterprise-grade open source distributed ledger framework”. That’s a mouthful but, simply put, it could revolutionize the banking systems of the world. This effort is independent of bitcoin. Some believe bitcoin will go away, but I remain optimistic. In Internet terms, bitcoin is at 1995. Entrepreneurs are investing time and money to make bitcoin wallets work smoothly with mobile devices. We don’t really need bitcoin in the U.S., but ask people in Argentina and other countries that do not trust their country’s currency and you will find a lot of interest. Source: Linux Foundation Gives Blockchain a Boost | Software | E-Commerce Times