VeChain

Does your chain hang low, does it wobble to and fro? Not the kind you put around your neck and match to your grillz...the blockchain kind.

VeChain is a blockchain platform for supply chain managers. With the wild, wild west of the blockchain world, companies like VeChain are making a buck by reining in the wildness, giving companies more peace of mind about security, as well as the quality and authenticity of the products being bought and sold on the platform.

VeChain uses tamper-proof distributed ledger technology—creating its own internal ledger system that promises the transactions and goods are legit.

If you’re thinking "But I thought blockchain was tamper-proof..." that’s unfortunately not the case. See: Selfish Mining, which can be a red herring for others mining for cryptocurrencies. Eclipse attacks are also possible, where one node that's fooled into accepting false data can spread this falsehood to other parts of the network, resulting in inconsistent ledgers and confusion. These are creative ways to cheat the blockchain system.

VeChain is a business-friendly, closed-system blockchain platform that stores all kinds of info about the products being bought and sold on it. Storage, transport, supply amount, and more product-specific attributes (like temperature) are all included on blocks for transparency.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is Bitcoin?4 Views

00:00

and finance Allah shmoop What is Bitcoin shmoop All right

00:07

people Well for starters it's virtual currency What is that

00:11

like Monopoly money Well kind of Okay but wait So

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wh what's not virtual currency This stuff really Bills coins

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gold A check with your validated signature on it when

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you actually have cash in the bank Money in the

00:24

old world is pretty much anything that everyone agrees is

00:27

valuable Like over the history of civilization People have used

00:30

all sorts of weird items to pay for things like

00:33

shells and cattle heads in whiskey and stuff like that

00:36

Credit cards apple pay in Venmo Yeah way easier to

00:40

buy a lot with then 182 seashells All the above

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are Fiat currency which means they're not backed by any

00:48

specific commodity or thing of value Instead they're backed by

00:52

the government that issues them a handshake and a promise

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and that's pretty much it Well in the old days

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if you had a dollar meant there was a dollars

00:58

worth of gold out there with your name on it

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you could walk into a bank and demand your little

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chunk of the yellow metal in return for that paper

00:53

$20 bill The dollar was worth a dollar because well

01:09

you could change it into that much worth of gold

01:12

What we pretty much gave up on the gold standard

01:14

in America anyway for good around the time of the

01:17

Great Depression and now dollars worth a dollar Because why

01:20

Well we say it is or more precisely because the

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government says it is Yeah the United States right to

01:26

tax its hard working citizens is what backs up that

01:29

promise Well Fiat currencies air printed by a government and

01:32

have value in part Or mostly because while the citizens

01:35

trust in the government and in part well we all

01:38

agree that paper bill has value Okay so now to

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the virtual part of virtual currencies have moved on from

01:44

government participation They have value because well the users of

01:48

them say they have value That's it Not much else

01:51

to it The idea of virtual currencies isn't really all

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that new Ask your parents about these things Yes original

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Disney dollars You'd buy a book of them for like

01:59

20 bucks or so in the A ticket on Lee

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got you into like the garden tour of carefully manicured

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roses is by Carnation Plaza Then you have the e

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ticket at the other end the best one that got

02:12

you into the parts of the Caribbean in the haunted

02:14

house You know when it came out well the Disney

02:16

dollars were a virtual currency on Lee They were on

02:19

paper and well really low tech Yeah And then they

02:21

got wet after you landed through the Matterhorn that get

02:24

all pulped out you have to throw him out Was

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very sad All right Zip forward 1/2 century Nowadays the

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virtual part means the same thing It means when we

02:31

say virtual reality Basically it means that exists in a

02:34

computer It's not riel It's an algorithm somewhere Well some

02:39

clever entrepreneurs decided that the U S greenback didn't offer

02:42

enough flexibility or rough you know anonymity You know if

02:45

you wanted to buy nuclear secrets or child porn or

02:48

illicit drugs or any other ill miserable and awful purchase

02:52

that buyers didn't want anyone around them to know that

02:54

you were buying while then here was your ticket Bitcoin

02:57

is security It comprises a complex system of quote log

03:01

in rappers unquote whereby a user must wrap around content

03:05

all kinds of security codes which protect the valued financial

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nut inside the hard shell Initially the market was seated

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with a kind of financial Easter egg hunt where the

03:14

controller's a Bitcoin buried value nuts all over the web

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Nut hunters had to answer extremely complex math questions in

03:21

order to win their prizes But if they won they

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were worth real cash money Bitcoin is the most famous

03:26

virtual currency but it's far from the on ly one

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e Syria is a big one You've also got light

03:31

Klein Dodge a Coin and Manero There are lots and

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lots of competitors and there's a whole market of people

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looking to make new ones all the time They have

03:38

conventions and workshops and organizations Yeah it's a thing And

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why not If you can get your virtual currency Tio

03:45

take hold while you have an instant fortune literally printing

03:49

your own money but not counterfeit like actually your own

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money like you were the central bank or treasury of

03:55

your own country The trick of course is getting other

03:57

people to come on board and trust you You need

04:00

other people to agree that your virtual currency is actually

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worth something Well a big part of the sell job

04:05

has to do with how the new currency is propagated

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How are more of them made How are they traded

04:11

How do they work You know because it doesn't take

04:13

much to make more virtual currency Like almost literally nothing

04:17

at all Hear it Shmoop Central We started making shmoop

04:20

points Doesn't take much input to make a 10 more

04:22

shmoop points or 1,000,000 or a trillion more shmoop lines

04:25

It all takes the same virtually Neil computing power But

04:28

when people used gold for money well they knew that

04:31

gold supply was limited There was gold mining that brought

04:34

new gold to the surface but the total amount of

04:35

gold was finite and it was really hard to get

04:38

while sometimes it just showed up in a river in

04:40

California or South Dakota or something And people would rush

04:42

there with hands and pick axes But generally speaking globally

04:46

someone couldn't just announced that they now had another 1,000,000

04:49

ounces of gold in their computer deal with it Well

04:51

virtual currencies try to follow this model in their own

04:54

virtual way to the extent that while the process usually

04:57

used to produce more virtual currency is called mining Yes

05:01

from the gold concept new supplies of the currency appear

05:05

using harder and harder math problems done by computers Convincing

05:08

users that this process of making the currency is on

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the up and up is part of the challenge of

05:13

founding a new currency But national currencies have a head

05:16

start in this area right You trust the United States

05:19

more than some kid who was born in 1989 by

05:22

virtue of being sovereign states while recognized by other sovereign

05:26

states at least geographic countries have some credibility but same

05:30

forces come into play Gold needed to be mined and

05:32

there was a finite amount of that on Earth Countries

05:34

could just print all the currency they wanted using higher

05:37

and higher denominations like you know with virtual currencies Well

05:39

there was no practical limit no real cost of production

05:43

But there is a consequence to producing tons of the

05:46

stuff If a country starts printing more and more currency

05:48

it sparks inflation devaluing its own individual currency unit eventually

05:54

maybe getting into hyper inflation territory and people running around

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with wheelbarrows full of cash to buy a carton of

05:59

milk The same supply demand dynamics of basic EQ on

06:02

work for regular currencies and for virtual currencies Think of

06:06

the competing virtual currencies like the different national currencies we

06:10

have in the non virtual world We've got U S

06:12

dollars in British pounds and euros and again in Swedish

06:15

krona and a whole bunch Other stuff right Well these

06:17

currencies worked perfectly in their home countries but out of

06:20

context there value gets a little shaky Try to use

06:22

some Swedish krona to buy a hot dog from a

06:24

New York street cart vendor guy or offer again to

06:27

buy meatballs off a meatball cart in Stockholm That's kind

06:31

of funny but it doesn't work We'll Bitcoin and the

06:33

other Cryptocurrencies have similar problems If you want to buy

06:35

a rocket launcher on the dark Web Bitcoin works great

06:38

But if you want to buy a box of cookies

06:40

from the Girl Scouts standing in front of the grocery

06:42

store well it's not gonna work You'll need some good

06:45

old fashioned US dollars In that way the relationship of

06:48

crypto currencies to the general market is similar to how

06:50

we treat stocks that trade on the stock exchange Their

06:53

recognised to have value sure but the value is often

06:55

tracked by an outside currency like the dollar Well Bitcoins

06:59

and other virtual currencies trade on markets You Khun swap

07:02

them out for real dollars and use those dollars to

07:04

buy Girl Scout cookies or street hot dogs or whatever

07:06

Just like stocks you might hold 100 shares of Google

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but if you want to spend some of their value

07:11

you have to turn them into dollars right like a

07:13

stock or any kind of market Traded anything Bitcoin and

07:16

other virtual currencies or subject to bubbles and bus The

07:19

bubble part happened for Bitcoin in 2017 At start of

07:22

the year one Bitcoin was valued about 900 bucks Then

07:25

it took off sky rocketing through the year it peaked

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in December of that year it just under $20,000 Then

07:31

the bubble burst At the end of well January 2018

07:34

it had fallen back to around 11,000 was below 10,000

07:37

by February and within a year of its peak it

07:39

was in the $3000 range Yeah about 80% off its

07:43

highest value well even off its highest levels The market

07:46

for Bitcoin remains big because of its shifting value The

07:48

size of the Bitcoin market changes is the dollar denominated

07:51

value of the currency moves But as of late 2018

07:55

early 2019 the market cap for Bitcoin has bounced around

07:59

$100,000,000,000 Well the idea behind Bitcoin maybe great get the

08:03

government out of currencies Borderless money for the future But

08:07

their issues One is security Like governments have to fight

08:09

counterfeiters The more valuable of virtual currency becomes well duff

08:13

The more likely there are hackers out there looking to

08:16

crack the code and they don't have to be sinister

08:18

creep working in secret in their mommy's basement Countries can

08:21

fight counterfeiters because they can pass laws making counterfeiting illegal

08:25

Bitcoin can't do that meaning that if Google wanted to

08:28

put its sizable brainpower to work making Bitcoins free for

08:31

anyone well there'd be nothing to stop them along the

08:34

same lines Virtual currencies could end up trading one authority

08:37

like governments for another like corporations like if Google or

08:40

Apple or Disney decided to make their own currencies and

08:43

squeeze out Bitcoin Any theory Um and the others Well

08:46

that happens We're looking at the future when the Girl

08:48

Scout is at the door knocking away and all she

08:50

takes is ah Google coin And you only have Disney

08:53

dollars Three point Oh and your virtual wallet Yeah No 00:08:56.744 --> [endTime] cookies for you Morning

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