Lorne Lantz
Lorne Lantz is a passionate bitcoin entrepreneur and educator who has built multiple financial technology start-ups that were recognized by PayPal and Swift. He has been programming for 20 years, and has deep domain knowledge in banking, payments, and bitcoin. He has earned degrees in computer engineering and an MBA.
Bitcoin is just the first app to use blockchain technology
Understanding the value of the blockchain above and beyond bitcoin.
Editor’s note: Lorne Lantz is a program co-chair for our O’Reilly Radar Summit: Bitcoin & the Blockchain on January 27, 2015, in San Francisco. For more on the program and for registration information, visit the Bitcoin & the Blockchain event website.
I remember the first time I heard about bitcoin. It was June 2012, and I was invited to a bitcoin meetup. The whole time I was sitting there, I thought these were a bunch of computer geeks playing around with nerd money.
At the same time, I felt excited about the possibilities. If what the bitcoin believers were saying was true, it could become something very big. When I took a closer look, I realized why it could be so groundbreaking: decentralization.
Unlike other currencies and payment networks, bitcoin is not controlled by a bank, government, or financial institution. Instead, thousands of computers around the world verify transactions and manage a global decentralized ledger. This innovative technology is called the blockchain, and it provides a unique pathway that allows — for the first time — many computers that don’t trust each other to achieve consensus. In bitcoin’s case, they are achieving consensus on updates to the global ledger. Read more…