IBM plans to promote open source projects based on Bitcoin within the company

Last year, a group of technology and financial giants, including IBM , Intel, Cisco, London Stock Exchange Group, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and others, joined forces to create an open source project based on Bitcoin - Hyperledger . These companies hope to one day create a way to make stock and other asset transactions safer and more reliable.

Given this, IBM’s next big move into financial software didn’t surprise many people, given that it’s the largest company in the world that has long sold software and support services. But IBM doesn’t intend to just use Hyperledger to sell more stuff to other companies. IBM also wants to keep the project running internally, Arvind Krishna, IBM ’s head of research , said at the 2016 WIRED Business Conference in New York .

The blockchain technology behind Bitcoin is like a decentralized ledger that keeps track of who owns which Bitcoin. When you pay with Bitcoin, the payment processor checks the blockchain to make sure the Bitcoin you are using is yours, and then records the new transaction in the ledger. Since there are many copies of the ledger on the Internet, people cannot cheat by changing a single copy. Krishna explained: Hyperledger works in a similar way, but adds more features. It also verifies the identity of the person you are transacting with - a priority for large companies and governments.

Krishna said that the real value of the Hyperledger system is that you don't have to trust any one person or organization, you just have to trust the mathematics behind the system. This means that you can do business with people you have never met without worrying that they will cheat you, because when using blockchain technology to conduct transactions, the ownership of a specific asset will not be transferred from one party to another before the network has completed the verification normally.

Krishna said IBM processes millions of transactions every year, from purchasing from manufacturers to purchasing assets for customers. Inevitably, there will be some disputes over tax rates or inappropriate couriers. On average, these disputes take 40 days to resolve. Kirshna hopes IBM can use Hyperledger to create a transparent system to verify who has paid for what, thereby reducing these disputes. If IBM can succeed, it may also work for others.