Ep12: Mance Harmon, Hashgraph and the Future of Distributed Ledgers

There is more to blockchain than bitcoin. And there is more to distributed ledgers than blockchain. Blockchain describes only one type of decentralized consensus mechanism. Although it is really the dominant system in this new distributed world, it's not the only one. I'm no computer scientist by any means and I suspect you aren't either. But I will say that from what I have learned, the major challenges in using blockchain technology so far have been related to scaling. Blockchain is inherently slow. Bitcoin takes 10 minutes to reach consensus—hard to wait that long making a transaction at Starbucks. Lightening network will likely change that but those are the facts now. Ethereum is faster at 15 seconds per transaction. But where do we need to be in order to go prime time with cryptocurrency? Well, Visa does about 5000 transactions per second so let's think of that as the gold standard for speed to incorporate something new into daily financial transactions. I'm not saying that you can't get there with blockchain and sidechains, but as we say in the non-technical world. There is more than one way to skin a cat (don't ask me why we say that). One project that got my attention a couple years ago was hashgraph. Hashgraph uses a completely different consensus mechanism with apparent lightening speed and asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance—something that many computer scientists believe to be the gold standard for security in distributed systems. That in and of itself is exciting but and idea or white paper can only get you so far. As an investor, I always look at the team first. When you look at Hashgraph, you see one of the most impressive teams in all of the cryptocurrency projects out there. I had the pleasure of interviewing Mance Harmon, CEO of Hashgraph a few months ago before it's presale and when we this week I will play it for you! This is a token you will see in circulation next year that you should keep an eye on. Shownotes: - Mance's life before cryptocurrency - How Distributed Ledger Technology will change the world - Limitations of the current blockchain - Performance of Hedera hashgraph - Applications made possible by Hedera - What does hashgraph stand with/against the current blockchain - The difference between private and public distributed ledgers - The reason why hashgraph is patented - The Hedera Council - Timeline of Hedera - Find out more about Hedera Hashgraph Hashgraph.com Hederahashgraph.com Telegram: Hedera Hashgraph Chat Medium: Hedera Hashgraph