Don Tapscott at TEDSummit 2016
Alex Tapscott at TedX San Francisco
Blockchain Revolution
by Don Tapscott & Alex Tapscott
Over 30 years, no theorist of the digital age has better explained the next big thing than Don Tapscott. For example, in Wikinomics Tapscott was the first to show how the Internet provides the first global platform for mass collaboration. Now, he writes about a profound technological shift that will change how the world does business—and everything else—using blockchain technology, which powers the digital currency Bitcoin.
The Internet as we know it is great for collaboration and communication, but is deeply flawed when it comes to commerce and privacy. The new blockchain technology facilitates peer-to-peer transactions without any intermediary such as a bank or governing body. Keeping the user’s information anonymous, the blockchain validates and keeps a permanent public record of all transactions.
That means that your personal information is private and secure, while all activity is transparent and incorruptible—reconciled by mass collaboration and stored in code on a digital ledger. With its advent, we will not need to trust each other in the traditional sense, because trust is built into the system itself.
Although many opportunities for the blockchain require a digital currency, Bitcoin is only one application of this great innovation in computer science. The blockchain can hold any legal document, from deeds and marriage licenses to educational degrees and birth certificates. Call it the World Wide Ledger. It enables smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations, decentralized government services, and transactions among things. The Internet of Everything needs a Ledger of Everything: the blockchain is a truly open, distributed, global platform that fundamentally changes what we can do online, how we do it, and who can participate.
Tapscott, writing with his son Alex, a financial analyst and technologist, argues that the blockchain will shape the next era of prosperity—in finance, business, healthcare, education, governance, and beyond.
Order Blockchain Revolution
Book Reviews
Poised to overtake bitcoin this year, Ethereum is changing the way we think about cryptocurrency
In an article special to the Globe and Mail, Alex Tapscott writes Bitcoin is the mother of all cryptocurrencies, and the most famous of them. Created by a person or people using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, it defined the algorithms that enable the transfer of...
Bitcoin Is Just The Beginning
One of the great mysteries of modern life is the time it still takes for a check to clear. Every other financial transaction is being reduced to the tap of a phone or the press of a key. But checks take days to rumble their way from payee to the originating bank, days...
How The Blockchain Will Transform Everything From Banking To Government To Our Identities
Father and son duo Don and Alex Tapscott have impeccable timing. Just as their new book, “Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, And The World,” came out, ventures centered on blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin,...
Trust and Verify: The Coming Blockchain Revolution
Blockchain today might be like the internet in 1993: a decade from now, you’ll wonder how society ever functioned without it, even though most of us barely know what it is today. Some fascinating blockchain sprouts are poking through these days, such as one company...
Financial Times Review
The Financial Times' John Gapper has reviewed Blockchain Revolution in the May 18th edition. The review examines the Tapscotts' predictions for future areas of...
The Impact of the Blockchain Goes Beyond Financial Services
Don and Alex Tapscott have published an article on Harvard Business Review about how the impact of the blockchain will not be limited to just banking, value transfer, and other financial services. They write: Much of the hype around blockchains has focused on their...
FedEx CEO: Adopt New Tech Like Blockchain or Be Disrupted
"Blockchain has the potential to completely revolutionize what's across the border." Speaking at CoinDesk's Consensus 2018 in New York today, Fred Smith, chairman and CEO of the U.S. logistic giant FedEx, doubled down on his commitment to embracing blockchain...
Don’t let bitcoin greed blind you to the potential of blockchain technology
Because I write about technology I am regularly assailed by people who are exercised about so-called “cryptocurrencies” like bitcoin, which most of them regard as a scam. But when I reply that while bitcoin might be newsworthy, the really important story concerns the...
Bermuda Continues to Attract DLT Companies With Blockchain-Friendly Regulations
"The government of Bermuda - all the way up to the [premier] himself - is showing remarkable leadership in the blockchain space," said Don Tapscott, author and executive director of the Blockchain Research Institute, per the Consensus press release. "Bermuda is...
What They’re Saying
The Tapscotts have written the book, literally, on how to survive and thrive in this next wave of technology-driven disruption. Likely to become one of the iconic books of our time.
Clay ChristensenBook Reviews
Alex Tapscott’s Tweets
One of the last real barriers to widespread institutional ownership/adoption of crypto. t.co/TH8q8wIXiU
This is a highly thoughtful rebuttal to the @paulkrugman op-ed this morning. t.co/zBAV4Z95d9
Don Tapscott’s Tweets
A great review of the updated version of Blockchain Revolution from longtime colleague Irving Wladasky-Berger! t.co/Lj5qOcgSth
Great to spend time with all of you, and I’m enthusiastic about the next stage of our collaboration! t.co/wkakjgKSP5
I'm pleased to join @SpaceChain's advisory board as they work to harness blockchain as a tool in space exploration.… t.co/yus6N6mhJ3