In 2014, I published the article “Blockchain”, which provided an overview of the technology and teased the future potential!

Over the past couple of years, blockchain has continued to gain momentum (supported by the growth of Bitcoin), which has resulted in the usual hype and desire to “blockchain all the things”.

Over recent months, a number of good videos have been published which I believe more realistically describe the potential of blockchain.

The first is a TED Talk, by Bettina Warburg. Bettina describes how the blockchain could eliminate the need for centralized institutions like banks or governments to facilitate trade, evolving age-old models of commerce and finance into something far more interesting: a distributed, transparent, autonomous system for exchanging value.

The second video is a simple animated infographic from “Future Thinkers”, which highlights nineteen industries that the blockchain could disrupt. Many of these themes, including payments, identity, supply chain and governance are areas I had previously highlighted and certainly remain viable use cases.

Although still relatively immature, I believe blockchain is starting to evolve from genesis into a technology that could truly transform traditional business models.

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