Fractional reserve is a banking system that allows commercial banks to profit by loaning part of their customers’ deposits, while just a small fraction of these deposits are stored as real cash and available for withdrawal. Practically speaking, this banking system creates money out of nothing using a percentage of their customers’ bank deposits.

Blockchain oracles are third-party services that provide smart contracts with external information. They serve as bridges between blockchains and the outside world. Blockchains and smart contracts cannot access off-chain data (data that is outside of the network). However, for many contractual agreements, it is vital to have relevant information from the outside world to execute the agreement.

Quantitative Easing (QE) may present different and controversial definitions. But basically speaking, it is a market operation (performed by central banks) that increases liquidity and inflation, with the alleged intention of stimulating the economy of a nation, encouraging businesses and consumers to borrow and spend more.

When you stumble across the terms blockchain and markets in the same sentence, you no doubt consider the booming ecosystem of exchanges facilitating cryptocurrency trades. Blockchain technology is incredibly versatile, however, and allows for markets of all sorts to be built on top of it. Financial assets can be either physical objects (tangible) or digital goods (intangible). But regardless of the type, where there are assets that hold value, there is a potential market. In this article, we’ll take a look at a particular kind of market that could benefit significantly from blockchain technology – prediction markets.

In short, remittance can be defined as the transfer of money to a distant location, usually between individuals that live in different countries. In most cases, it consists of an immigrant worker sending money to their home country. Today, remittances represent the largest flow of funds into the developing world, surpassing foreign direct investments and official development assistance. According to the World Bank Group, the remittance industry experienced significant growth in the past years, up 8.8% in 2017 and 9.6% in 2018.

Among the many emerging use cases of blockchain technology, digital identity management and verification is perhaps one of the most promising. In 2018 alone, billions of people were affected by personal data breaches, all around the world. There is an undeniable need for more secure methods of storing, transferring, and verifying sensitive information. In this context, blockchain systems may bring valuable solutions to some of the difficulties faced by most centralized databases.

Blockchains are secured through a variety of mechanisms that include advanced cryptographic techniques and mathematical models of behavior and decision-making. Blockchain technology is the underlying structure of most cryptocurrency systems and is what prevents this kind of digital money from being duplicated or destroyed. The use of blockchain technology is also being explored in other contexts where data immutability and security are highly valuable. A few examples include the act of recording and tracking charity donations, medical databases, and supply chain management. However, blockchain security is far from being a simple subject. Therefore, it is important to understand the basic concepts and mechanisms that grant robust protection to these innovative systems.