Blockchain is the technology that powers cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Digibyte, Bytecoin and many others.

At first it’s hard to get over the idea that on 22nd May 2010 a software developer by the name of Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoins ($41) for two Papa John’s pizzas, what at today’s rate would be roughly 136 million dollars (also known as the “Bitcoin Pizza Day”).

This real world transaction was an important first step in proving the viability of blockchain technology as a facilitator of payments and the meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies is a testament to that.

Since then trillions of dollars worth of value has changed hands on various blockchains and there are already over a thousand blockchains with a total market cap of around $800 billion. Year 2018 will see creation of many more.

Blockchain technology solves a critical part required for the success of PSD2, which is removing the settlement risk between parties through Distributed Ledger Technology. It also makes the transaction data easily accessible to all parties with very little effort.

Projects like Stellar and Ripple are extremely well positioned to provide easy and open access for innovative companies to build a new class of products and services.

While cryptocurrencies are new, hot and speculative class of assets they are also testing grounds for the blockchain technology that will ultimately enable the practical implementation of PSD2. Cryptocurrencies like Bytecoin and Digibyte can already provide customers with near instantaneous and cheap (below 0.001$) transaction costs, and they will perfectly blend in into the PSD2 as customer facing means of payment.