Cryptographers has been the middle men in the transaction logic of transactions. But these middle men take a large piece of the action. What if there was an internet of value. Amazing!

Bitcoin’s value goes up and down like a currency. Few people are actually using Bitcoin, but we need to disambiguate Bitcoin from blockchain. Trust is peer to peer through clever coding. So the ledger is explained by Tapscott and you’ve probably seen hundreds of diagrams of how blockchain works. The question is how useful will block chain be?

“Could we pre-distribute wealth?” Tapscott asks. Immutable contracts that cannot be destroyed or changed? I just wonder how many contracts are currently being destroyed because they aren’t encrypted. I wonder if a blockchain would cut out AirBnb from the value creation of sharing a room? I don’t fully buy his logic that by having something immutable, you necessarily don’t need to have an intermediary. Certainly, there is value in dealing with remittances. Blockchain could be used to protect our data about ourselves; instead of Google monetizing our data; instead of Google leveraging insights; you sell your data to the commercial entity before they can sell something to you? I think there is a logic problem here. On an emotional level, Tapscott gets the most cheers at this point, but I’m not sure I would want to pay for a search engine. Smart contracts: manages contracts? New model of democracy where politicians are accountable to citizens? Again, it’s not the ledger that solves the problem; it’s broader institutions. Overall, I’m excited about blockchain to encrypt information with fewer middle men but I’m not convinced (yet!) that it’s application is that broad. And blcokchain is painfully slow to process transactions! (I’m sure that could be fixed)