Blockchain technology: Redefining trust for a global, digital economy

New blockchain technologies offer a decentralized approach to trust - a problem that concerns personal data, finances, and transactions. The 21st century relied on a centralized model that is vulnerable to exclusion, falsification, corruption, and data breaches. This review spells out how the blockchain technology can promote financial inclusion in the developing world, an objective laid out in the Sustainable Development Goals. Participants in areas of poor documentation and law can build reputation through self-sovereign digital identities in order to secure loans and participate in financial transactions. Further, it explores the technology that allows it to remain permanent, inalterable, and cryptographically secure so that parties cannot exploit the system. Problems of anonymity and dispute are also explored.