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Different ways to understand blockchain

Hosted by Jeff Drew

Please note: This item is from our archives and was published in 2018. It is provided for historical reference. The content may be out of date and links may no longer function.

Blockchain expert Amanda Wilkie, a consultant with Boomer Technologies, provides a guided tour around the blockchain ecosystem, explaining how the internet, ATMs, and even postage stamps can help CPAs comprehend how the digital distributed ledger and related technologies work.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • How understanding the relationship between emails and the internet can help explain the differences between bitcoin and blockchain.
  • How blockchain has layers of technology, much like the internet does, and it’s those layers that make the blockchain digital ledger resilient, immutable, and distributed.
  • Permissioned vs. permissionless; private vs. public: What the four “P-words” are, how they compare to one another, and what they actually mean. Permissioned is not the same as private.
  • How Etherium is a blockchain with a programming language, making it more of a platform than just a distributed ledger technology.
  • What security tokens, utility tokens, and digital asset tokens are, how they work, and what practical purposes they can fulfill.

Play the episode below:


To comment on this podcast or to suggest an idea for another podcast, contact Jeff Drew, a JofA senior editor, at Jeff.Drew@aicpa-cima.com.