Blockchain technology has its roots in the late 1970s, when a computer scientist named Ralph Merkle patented the hash tree (aka Merkle tree). These trees are computer science structures that use encryption to link blocks together for storing data. In the late 1990s, Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta used Merkle trees to implement systems that could not tamper with document timestamps. This is the first instance in the history of blockchain. The technology has been evolving and has gone thro...