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.
Featured In
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...
What They’re Saying
Facebook’s Libra, For All of its Promise, Faces an Uphill Battle
Alex Tapscott defines the deployment of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency as a “watershed moment.” This new currency opens up the possibility of banking the unbanked, but also comes with many challenges for the company: conflict with big banks who no longer own the only...
Q&A: Blockchain Expert Alex Tapscott Sees Coming Crypto War as ‘Cataclysmic’
In this interview with Computerworld, Alex Tapscott discusses Facebook’s shift into financial services with the new Libra blockchain and what this signals for the banking industry. Continue reading Alex's interview with Lucas Mearian.
It’s Time For Online Voting
In his piece for the New York Times, Alex Tapscott argues that a legitimate election outcome depends on addressing vulnerabilities in the system.