Why Airbnb and Other Travel Brands Are Interested in Blockchain Technology

Did you ever wish you could instantly receive your American Airlines AAdvantage miles as soon as you settled into your cramped middle seat? Or that you didn't have to worry about carrying around your passport with you everywhere you go when you're traveling abroad? Or what if, the next time you book a listing on Airbnb, your reputation score and that of your host can be confirmed instantly? A single technology disruptor, born of Bitcoin, is emerging as a possible solution for those travel-related situations. It's blockchain, the underlying system by which a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin operates. Bitcoin is just another name for digital currency and it runs off of blockchain. "Bitcoin is like Skype for money," said Melanie Swan, a blockchain theorist at the New School for Social Research in New York. "It digitizes it, and put money on the Internet. Blockchain is the software protocol upon which Bitcoin runs." Swan gave the analogy of email to better describe how blockchain operates: just as you'd send an email over an email SMTP protocol, you can send money (Bitcoin) over blockchain's protocol. Understood in its most basic form in relation to currency, blockchain is similar to a peer-to-peer platform like PayPal or Venmo, but without having to wait for your bank and the other person's bank to verify that transaction, or having to pay a fee to transfer that money. For blockchain to work, however, you don't necessarily need Bitcoin; it can work with any currency or cryptocurrency, or basically any type of information. Blockchain is a shared, public ledger that's theoretically made secure because information is always added to it, but can never be removed. All transactions are chained together so there can't be any duplicates or changes to who owns the currency, or information. An algorithm using cryptography verifies each transaction for authenticity and each transaction has to be agreed upon across the entire network for it to work. Whatever transactions that take place on blockchain become record, and that's how the system builds "trust." Banks' Interest In a December investors note prepared by Goldman Sachs, the analysts had this to say about blockchain: "This decentralized, cryptography-based solution cuts out the middle man. It has the potential to redefine transactions and the back office of a multitude of different industries. From banking and payments to notaries to voting systems to vehicle registrations to wire fees to gun checks to