Large businesses, including many of the world’s biggest banks, have been investing in blockchain in the hopes that it can help simplify and reduce the costs of some of their data-heavy processes. The technology, which first emerged as the system underpinning cryptocurrency bitcoin, is a shared public record of data that is maintained by a network of computers on the internet. This means every user on a network could potentially have access to all information. While this makes the technology well-suited at ensuring the information's integrity, it also makes it inadequate for use by big businesses with strict data privacy requirements.

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/08/10/technology/10reuters-microsoft-blockchain.html?smid=tw-share&referer=https://t.co/est1lwhGWo?amp=1&_r=0