Legendary billionaire Richard Branson: Blockchain will lead the economic revolution

Richard Branson has long been a supporter of Bitcoin. The founder of the Virgin Group recently publicly stated that blockchain technology plays an important role in today's global economic reform.

At the Virgin Disruptors conference held in London, Branson further emphasized the important impact of blockchain technology in data and identity authentication management, national land and property ownership, and used Egypt as an example to specifically talk about the issue of blockchain and ownership.

He said:

In Egypt, 90% of the people have houses and yards, but they have no written proof of the real ownership of the house... In addition, the inability to provide proof of property means that it is almost impossible to start your own business or get a bank loan.

Currently, major banks, financial institutions and enterprises are studying blockchain technology. If appropriate encryption technology and security measures are adopted, blockchain technology can be used to create an unchangeable ecosystem and solve data management and sharing problems.

Branson mentioned a project between blockchain and mining company BitFury and Georgia’s National Registry Agency (NAPR) to put data about people’s land assets and rights into an unchangeable ledger.

The value of immutability

When Branson talked about storing immutable data, he clearly explained how blockchain technology stores data in separate blocks with absolute security measures.

Of course, the premise for ensuring this security is that the blockchain must be decentralized, with miners on the public network contributing computing power to verify transactions.

Therefore, the potential for blockchain to revolutionize industries as diverse as finance and real estate markets mentioned in Branson’s speech only applies to projects and distributed systems that truly deploy decentralized architectures.

Most blockchain banking systems and financial applications developed by banks and technology giants such as IBM are based on private, centralized networks with network operators who form alliances to jointly oversee network operations.

Their purpose is obvious: to eliminate immutability and create private ledgers and blockchain systems.

Although Branson is optimistic about blockchain technology, if the current development momentum in the blockchain field continues to move towards the goals of financial institutions, then the prospects may be worrying.

Because financial institutions and banks only want a decentralized blockchain platform that can be used to modify and adjust data.