Matt Hancock, UK Minister for the Cabinet Office, said blockchains distributed ledgers, shared ledgers are digital tools for building trust in data. He added that data held in the blockchain comes with its own history, and that history is a fundamental part of proving its integrity.
Hancock said that Bitcoin, the first operational application of blockchain technology, proved that distributed ledgers can be used to track currency as it is passed from one entity to another. But the establishment of distributed consensus, permitted by blockchain technology, could have countless applications beyond payments.
In 2015, the UK government launched a research initiative to bring together the Research Councils, Alan Turing Institute and Digital Catapult with industry, in order to address the research opportunities and challenges for digital currency technology and increased research funding in this area.
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