One of the cool things about the bitcoin blockchain is the number of possibilities it entails. Bitcoin isn’t just a financial asset; it’s a piece of technology that changes everything. One company is building a business on record-keeping by utilizing the blockchain.
The company of focus is called Factom. Factom is am open-source Bitcoin 2.0 blockchain-based company using the technology for non-monetary purposes.
There are so many possible problems with centralized record-keeping that could be solved through the decentralized blockchain method. For example, multiple mortgage companies, such as CitiBank, were fined billions of dollars due to mishandling of records. One of these companies was Bank of America who fell victim to a $17 billion fine, also known as the largest fine in history.
In response, Factom made the video below to showcase how they could utilize the bitcoin blockchain to keep Bank of America’s records permanently engrained in the distributed public ledger.
“Factom organizes all of the documents of a mortgage into a chain of entries. Every tax return, every credit report, every title document gets hashed and put into Factom. Factom also records every payment made, every loan service transfer and every piece of court documentation related to a foreclosure.”
The entries are then “filed” into directory blocks and secured to the bitcoin blockchain every ten minutes. They can then be audited in real-time and verified instantly, allowing everyone to double-check the work completed and catch mistakes if they arise before they become a problem.
Watch Factom use the Bank of America fine as a case study below and leave you feedback for what you think the future of record-keeping on the blockchain holds.
Images from Factom, Ken Wolter, and Shutterstock.