Blockchain and Bitcoin's "Top No. Iron Powder": Microsoft

In the past forty years, the world has experienced rapid technological changes. Every time after the wave of change, we can continue to maintain the leading technology companies, and Microsoft is a giant that has stood at the top of the technology industry after many changes. It has to be suspected that this company has some kind of high probability. Embrace and lead the secret of change.

In this wave of blockchain transformation, Microsoft did not hesitate to become the "number one big iron powder" of blockchain and bitcoin …

01 Microsoft's past is not smooth sailing

Almost every long-established technology company faces the trend of modern technology. It is like a "straight-line" in the sky. A slight carelessness may inevitably fall into recession or even fall to the bottom.

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Of course, Microsoft is no exception, and it has been declining. Even many people think that it will never return. Throughout the history of Microsoft, you will find that this is completely a vicissitude giant.

The history of Microsoft Empire can be divided into three sections:

The first paragraph: barbaric growth, monopoly Tsundere

From 1978 to 1999, this was the era of Bill Gates.

Bill Gates turned Microsoft into a high-tech monopoly empire. Bill Gates, with a strong desire to win, tried every means to maximize market share, and cooperated with the then technology giant IBM to compete in the latter stage until he dominated the personal PC software market. Later, in addition to the Windows operating system, Microsoft introduced a powerful office software Office, and later the system bundled IE browser was a great success, although it was not long after Netscape accused of bundling and pre-installing the browser is a monopoly.

Through the rolling monopoly, Microsoft's annual revenue has skyrocketed. Since 1993, Bill Gates has been on the Forbes American Rich List for more than 20 years and has been the world's richest man for more than 10 years.

The second paragraph: clean up the mess, into a desperate situation

From 2000 to 2013, this is the era of Ballmer.

This is the most frustrating era of Microsoft, and Bill Gates's successor, Ballmer, has begun a long process of cleaning up the mess of the previous era. The anti-monopoly disputes against Microsoft around the world continue to ferment, making Ballmer's head burned, although at first it was only a few fines and reputational disgrace, and did not have much impact on Big Mac, Microsoft is still as always High revenue.

But then, we found that most of the failed products in Microsoft's history were launched in this era. Perhaps Microsoft has inherited the arrogance of the previous era, in which Microsoft introduced the most failed MP3 player Zune, the most failed Windows operating system version of Vista, the Bing search engine without any advantage, but the Camel is crushed. A mobile Internet super portal Windows Phone, which was originally expected to be high, made Microsoft lose in the future of mobile Internet.

In this era, Microsoft's stock price continues to enter a new low, it seems that this technology giant will be buried this way, and everyone is forgotten in the long river of history.

The third paragraph: learn lessons, respect the opponent, open and win-win, return to the peak

Since 2014, this is the new Microsoft era.

In 2014, Bill Gates stepped down as chairman and the new Indian CEO Nadella took office. In this era, Microsoft has undergone major changes from top to bottom and even corporate culture. Some people say that Nadella saved the Big Mac in this rapid recession and brought it back to the ascending track and returned to the market value first.

Microsoft's "love" with blockchain and bitcoin, which was opened in this era…

02 first to lay out the blockchain, 5 years to grind a sword

In 2014, when the concept of “blockchain” was rarely mentioned at home or even internationally, Microsoft was interested in this new thing and became the first international technology giant to truly lay out the blockchain.

In the past five years, if the blockchain transcript submitted by Microsoft is listed, it will definitely make all the competitors in the blockchain field feel ashamed:

In December 2014 , Microsoft added the Bitcoin payment option to the online store for the first time, stepping out of the first step into the virtual finance industry.

In November 2015 , Microsoft launched and launched Azure Blockchain as a Service (BaaS), covering 24 regions around the world, launching several development tools and attracting a large number of new members, while upgrading the Azure BaaS platform to the world's largest certification area. Blockchain market.

In June 2016 , Microsoft announced the launch of the Bletchley program, an "open, modular blockchain component driven by Azure, which created a blockchain enterprise ecosystem with Microsoft's own architecture." A number of common problems with cross-industry blockchain users.

In 2017, Microsoft moved more frequently: In January, Microsoft released a blockchain partnership strategy; in February, joined the Ethereum Alliance with representative companies from all over the world, and invested heavily in Ethereum blockchain technology. In May, the blockchain concept validation framework was released, and support for more blockchain protocols was added to establish partnerships with R3, Chain, and BlockApps. In August, the enterprise-level open source blockchain base platform Coco framework was launched. Join the IC3 (Cryptographic Currency and Contract Initiative) program; in October, launch the "Azure Government Secret" service.

In February 2018, Microsoft announced that the Microsoft Authenticator application would integrate blockchain-based decentralized ID verification technology: DID.

……

For the blockchain support, Marley Gray, then head of financial services technology strategy at Microsoft, said: "We are almost bet on the entire cloud service." In the third era of Microsoft, Nadra's major reform deployment, mobile and cloud services were two of Microsoft's priorities at the time, and Azure cloud services is one of the core of Microsoft's blockchain strategy.

It can be said that this time, Microsoft embraced the blockchain without reservation.

On the other hand, the domestic first-line technology giants, the first to explore the blockchain field, Tencent established the blockchain team in 2015, but from the output results in recent years, the investment and progress of the development blockchain is not very fast. Another giant, Alibaba, began to lay out the blockchain field in 2016.

In fact, I want to compare Microsoft's support for the blockchain and Tencent and Ali's support for the blockchain. It is very simple to see where their cloud service main business menu service places the "blockchain" service.

Microsoft Azure puts the blockchain category in a prominent position under the product menu, and offers a wide range of services, and a large number of services in the blockchain market.

Aliyun divides the blockchain into a very inconspicuous position: product-enterprise application-blockchain, and Tencent Cloud's blockchain menu placement is similarly categorized. It is conceivable that the blockchain service is in two major categories. The importance of the domestic first-line giants in the overall cloud service layout is not high, and the service provision is also slow and backward.

Perhaps Tencent and Alibaba are now trying to catch up, and they have already achieved certain results. I hope that in the future they will be able to expand the influence of the blockchain industry to the whole world.

03 Dramatic reform, "big ship" turned his head and did not hesitate

In fact, many people are very curious. Why is such a successful giant, embracing the blockchain, the technology of "centering the business life", and embracing it so fiercely?

This point has to return to the third paragraph of the history of the development of the Microsoft Empire, and draws on the profound lessons of the first two paragraphs of the old Microsoft era. The newly appointed CEO Nadella has made drastic changes to Microsoft, not only openly engaged with competitors. Collaboration (even helping the old rival Apple to customize the Mobile Office suite), proposes a core strategy for the new era: mobile and cloud services.

Cloud services require many developers to join in the construction. The two most important points in the era of mobile Internet are openness and open source. So Microsoft stopped to stand still, from the past "software forced barbarism and monopoly" to the current open and win-win, embrace open source. .

In 2018, Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition of Github, the world's largest open source code hosting and social platform (blockchain open source projects basically hosted code on this platform). In the beginning, many developers and users strongly resisted this acquisition, and thought it was a “stubborn, closed monopoly old monster” to acquire their paradise, but then they found that the new Microsoft took the greatest sincerity and said it would keep Github Independence, it will not interfere with it.

In fact, the purpose of the new Microsoft is to let go of the old Microsoft's high-end shelf, to minimize the attitude, fully embrace open source to try to attract more open source software developers to use Azure's cloud services, and enter the platform to participate in the open platform. Subsequently, the developers on the Github platform began to slowly put aside their prejudice, believing that Github was always neutral and began accepting the olive branch that its parent company, Microsoft, was sincerely throwing.

At present, as for Microsoft's embrace of open source, the whole technology industry has put a thumbs up and admire Microsoft's huge impact of embracing open source, open and win-win, and the huge industry.

04 For Bitcoin, Bill Gates to the left, Microsoft to the right

For Bitcoin, Bill Gates has published more than one opinion. Earlier, Bill Gates once praised "Bitcoin is exciting", but the most recent one was in May 2018, he said: "Bitcoin is the most stupid investment. For Bitcoin, if there is the most The simple way, I agree to short it."

However, earlier this year, in February 2018, Microsoft announced something that would be exciting for people in the global tech world: Microsoft's decentralized identity project DID will become the company's blockchain strategy point. Soon at the end of the same year, Microsoft's official website published a white paper on "Decentralized Identity." Perhaps people outside the non-technical circle look nothing, but the entire tech world is interested in DID because it is likely to have a major impact on the future of the Internet.

In May 2019, Microsoft suddenly announced an early preview of the network called the ION project, which will be officially launched on the Bitcoin main network later this year (the project is a Bitcoin Layer 2 network similar to the Lightning Network ). Many people in the scientific and technological circles have said that this move may affect the entire technology industry.

What is Decentralized Identity (DID)? We found the following description on Microsoft's Decentralized Identity Publishing page:

Microsoft believes that everyone has the right to have their digital identity—it stores all personal data in a secure, private way. This ID must be seamlessly integrated into everyday life, giving you complete control over data access and usage.

According to Microsoft, after examining a variety of decentralized identity systems, they finally turned their attention to the "public blockchain." They believe that blockchain technology and protocols are well suited for implementing DID . Although Microsoft is rich and talented, they still choose to put this strategically important project on the Bitcoin main network, which not only shows Microsoft's trust in the security and reliability of the Bitcoin network, but also shows that Microsoft's direct affirmation of the value of the Bitcoin network .

Shortly after the release of the ION project, it was discovered that Microsoft's EXCEL software quietly included Bitcoin symbols in the currency classification option. Bitcoin symbols have been added to the latest version of the ARIAL fonts (the most frequently used English fonts in the world) that come with Windows systems, so that most devices can display this symbol correctly.

Postscript 05

In the era of Bill Gates, the Microsoft technology empire laid a solid foundation, but also buried many hidden dangers. After all the ups and downs, Microsoft has fully realized that the trend is unstoppable. The development and evolution of technology and the Internet seem to have been fixed. The free transfer of information from the Internet to the point-to-point network in the current point-to-point network The free transmission, which is entirely driven by the "mysterious power" revealed by human bones, can not be resisted even if it is as strong as the Microsoft Empire, and everything is proceeding in an orderly direction to the free civilization of mankind.

At this moment, perhaps Microsoft, which is closely related to the development of the technology industry for decades, knows that even if they don't do it, there will be someone else who will rush to replace their position.

In the future, what we can foresee is that Microsoft's ultra-early deep layout of the blockchain will definitely bring huge growth to the new Microsoft, so that it will remain the leader in the blockchain transformation wave. Chain and bitcoin are very important to Microsoft. Click on this link to listen to the Bit Cat Daily FM: Microsoft Application Blockchain Technology to Decentralize Identity

The entry of Microsoft's technology giant is just as important for blockchain and bitcoin . Without the guidance and full investment of this giant, the competition of the whole technology industry will follow suit. Perhaps the blockchain will not be pushed into the vision of the global science and technology community so quickly. With the blessing of mainstream giants, “blocks” The argument that the chain is useless and bitcoin is worthless is not broken.

Microsoft is no longer the Microsoft representative of Bill Gates, it is a new era of Microsoft. Perhaps in the near future, Microsoft will show a new form through the grasp of the blockchain wave.

The mainstream has come, we will wait and see.

Message mining : Do you want Microsoft to be a giant in the blockchain field? why? Feel free to share your opinion in the message area.

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『Declaration : This article is the author's independent point of view, does not represent the vernacular blockchain position, and does not constitute any investment advice or advice. 』

Original: WJ

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