The four most important general-purpose technologies (GPTs) that have, so far, drastically changed humanity have been steam engines, electricity, information technology (IT), and artificial intelligence (AI). And contrary to what Mr. Gates argues, blockchain has just been added to that list. Blockchain is a globally distributed public ledger technology. It enables a secure way of recording information as well as being a secure peer-to-peer method of verifying information, movement of assets, documents, and, in particular, real-time money transfer across the world economies. And it does so with significantly small costs due. It also provides transparency, decentralization, and increases efficiency and decreases transaction costs thanks to no intermediaries. Although there were a number of similar technologies as late as the 1970s, the blockchain technology itself was first publicly introduced by the famous Nakamoto (2008) paper of Bitcoin, following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. And today, almost all cryptocurrencies have their own blockchains as in the bitcoin or Ethereum blockchains. Decentralization or the decentralized nature of the blockchains basically means that the validation process is not through a central authority, but rather via a consensus algorithm in a distributed network. It decentralizes digital records of products or information and is user verified. It also provides anonymity, without revealing the true identity of a user... Read more on Politics Today: Could Blockchain Be a Real Game Changer? [Politics Today, January 26, 2023]