Officials with Griffin Blockchain Services, Inc., a blockchain group that plans to operate out of the old AmerisourceBergen building in downtown Paducah, gave a presentation Thursday on the basics of blockchain technology and how it ties into the fast-growing cryptocurrency market.
About 50 people attended the seminar hosted by the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce. Blockchain and cryptocurrency knowledge among the crowd ranged from the novice level still deciphering the two terms to some who were running their own small-scale cryptocurrency mining operation.
Qianjie “QJ” Zhao and Dennis Zhang, CEO and CFO of Griffin Blockchain Services, also shared insight about their company and what drew them to Paducah.
Zhang said he hopes business owners and entrepreneurs learned how they could apply blockchain technology to better their businesses.
“I think it’s important, for whatever business you’re in, to think about how, you know, ‘how [could] my business take advantage of this new technology?’ and how it could potentially benefit you,” Zhang said.
Zhang explained that blockchain is a digitally distributed ledger that stores information such as transaction records. Rather than data being stored with one centralized ledger, blockchain data are stored on a network of computers.
Because blockchains are stored on multiple networks, Zhang said it is close to impossible to hack blockchains. If a hacker accesses a blockchain on one computer, there would still be multiple, possibly millions of copies, of the correct blockchain stored on other networks.
Blockchain technology and its decentralized nature is commonly used with cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, Zhang said. Blockchains keep track of the transactions of Bitcoins among different users. Without a centralized location such as a bank for…
