Demo version of Need for Speed Carbon. Two cars and three car models are available to select from in this test version. Subscribe and SAVE, give a gift subscription or get help with an existing subscription by clicking the links below each cover image. Need For Speed Carbon Strategy Guide' title='Need For Speed Carbon Strategy Guide' />A Strategists Guide to Blockchain. An expensive work of art changes hands. Neither the buyer nor the seller is named publicly, but the exchange is verified, the provenance of the painting travels with it, and the artwork is automatically insured against theft. A voting machine records votes in a frontier country known for past political corruption. Though there is no central government repository, each vote is tagged to an individual with no duplication. The individual identities remain anonymous, and the results of the election are undisputed. A consortium of banks gain market share by settling trades in real time instead of waiting three days for the trade to clear and underwriting loans in a day instead of waiting two weeks, all with minimal risk. The same banks also start to execute same day currency trades at optimal exchange rates, spending a fraction of the costs required in the past. All of these transactions are tracked and statistics are kept, so that governments are aware of the movement of capital across their borders, and activity is monitored for patterns that might indicate money laundering. But the identity of the individual traders or purchasers is untraceable. The name of the technology that could make all this happen is blockchain. Originally the formal name of the tracking database underlying the digital currency bitcoin, the term is now used broadly to refer to any distributed electronic ledger that uses software algorithms to record transactions with reliability and anonymity. This technology is also sometimes referred to as distributed ledgers its more generic name, cryptocurrencies the electronic currencies that first engendered it, bitcoin the most prominent of those cryptocurrencies, and decentralized verification the key differentiating attribute of this type of system. The Hunger Games Free Download Pirate Bay Torrent. At its heart, blockchain is a self sustaining, peer to peer database technology for managing and recording transactions with no central bank or clearinghouse involvement. Because blockchain verification is handled through algorithms and consensus among multiple computers, the system is presumed immune to tampering, fraud, or political control. It is designed to protect against domination of the network by any single computer or group of computers. Participants are relatively anonymous, identified only by pseudonyms, and every transaction can be relied upon. Moreover, because every core transaction is processed just once, in one shared electronic ledger, blockchain reduces the redundancy and delays that exist in todays banking system. Companies expressing interest in blockchain include HP, Microsoft, IBM, and Intel. In the financial services sector, some large firms are forging partnerships with technology focused startups to explore possibilities. For example, R3, a financial technology firm, announced in October 2. Participants include such influential banks as Citi, Bank of America, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Uni. Credit, Socit Gnrale, Mitsubishi UFG Financial Group, National Australia Bank, and the Royal Bank of Canada. Another early experimenter is Nasdaq, whose CEO, Robert Greifeld, introduced Nasdaq Linq, a blockchain based digital ledger for transferring shares of privately held companies, also in October 2. If experiments like these pan out, blockchain technology could become a game changing force in any venue where trading occurs, where trust is at a premium, and where people need protection from identity theft including the public sector managing public records and elections, healthcare keeping records anonymous but easily available, retail handling large ticket purchases such as auto leasing and real estate, and, of course, all forms of financial services. Indeed, some farsighted banks are already exploring how blockchain might transform their approaches to trading and settling, back office operations, and investment and capital assets management. They recognize that the technology could become a differentiating factor in their own capabilities, enabling them to process transactions with more efficiency, security, privacy, reliability, and speed. It is possible that blockchain could transform transactions to the same degree that the global positioning system GPS transformed transportation, by making data accessible through a common electronic platform. Blockchain could become a force anywhere trading occurs, trust is at a premium, and people need protection from identity theft. But although the potential is immense, so is the uncertainty. Distributed ledger technologies are so new, so complex, and so prone to rapid change that its difficult to predict what form they will ultimately take or even to be sure they will work. The Gartner Group declared in an August 2. Peak of Inflated Expectations and was headed for the Trough of Disillusionment. Another research firm, Forrester, titled its 2. Dont Believe in Miracles, advising enterprises to wait five to 1. On the other hand, some authorities advocate energetic R D. The distributed payment technology embodied in bitcoin has real potential, said Andrew Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England, in September 2. On the face of it, it solves a deep problem in monetary economics how to establish trust the essence of money in a distributed network. Strategists take note Proceed deliberately. Dont try to convert existing systems to blockchain initiatives right away. Rather, explore how others might try to disrupt your business with distributed ledger technology, and how your company could use it to leap ahead instead. Put one or two pilot projects into place. In all cases, link your investments to your value proposition, and give your business partners and your customers what they want most speed, convenience, and control over their transactions. Develop a robust strategy, one in which your company thrives whether blockchain is transformative or not. The Roots of the Technology. Decentralized digital currency started in 2. During its first few years, it was often described as a covert postfinancial crisis protest against the global banking system, and bitcoins were used as an alternative currency by money launderers and illegal dark web trading sites such as the Silk Road exchanges which have been systematically shut down by legal authorities. The name of the bitcoin protocols creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, is widely assumed to be a pseudonym, and a number of attempts to detect his or her real identity have proven inconclusive. Nakamoto published the specs for the bitcoin system in 2. At the time, 1,0. US3. Related Storiesby Charity Delichby Martin Roetsby Catherine Palmieri. But digital currency was also recognized, from the start, as a potential wild card in legitimate finance and as a possible investment vehicle. Its value began to rise rapidly after 2. The currency reached its peak value on November 2. Since then, the price has stabilized considerably, hovering between 2. The ultimate fate of the currency, including how broadly it will be accepted, is uncertain. Anyone can try to create a bitcoin, but its not easy. The technique for making bitcoins, known as mining, was deliberately designed to protect the currencys value through scarcity. Bitcoins can be created only at a constrained rate it takes about 1. The processing power required for each bitcoin is so large the currency has been criticized for contributing to climate change, because of the carbon burned in running the computers. As a medium of exchange, the bitcoin, like the U. S. dollar or any other currency, has no intrinsic value. It can be bought or sold, but it is not automatically redeemable for another commodity, such as gold. However, whereas most currencies are backed by a government or central bank, bitcoin is authenticated by the peer network that produced it.