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.
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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
“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 Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma
“What a spectacular book. Mind-blowing in its expansiveness and profundity. It makes me think we’re at one of those times in technology, economic and social history where the sky is the limit.”
—Steve Wozniak, co-founder, Apple Computer and Chief Scientist, Prime Data
“Occasionally a book comes along that changes the global discourse. This is likely to be one of those books. Blockchains are at the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Tapscotts lucidly explain why and how to capture the opportunity and avoid the dangers.”
—Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum
“A carefully researched and beautifully written book. Blockchain Revolution argues that the ‘internet of value’ will transform our lives. A must-read book for our disruptive times.”
—Dominic Barton, Global Managing Director, McKinsey & Company”
“Don and Alex brilliantly illuminate the technology that could profoundly impact the way we manage issues of trust, security and privacy for years to come.”
—Indra Nooyi, Chairman & CEO, PepsiCo
“A fascinating—and reassuring—insight into a technology with the power to remake the global economy. What a prize. What a book!”
—Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever
“A masterpiece. Gracefully dissects the potential of blockchain technology to take on today’s most pressing global challenges.”
—Hernando De Soto, President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Peru
“The great missing element in the Internet has been a ‘trust protocol,” a way of knowing that a transaction is verified and authentic. Blockchain technology could provide a foundation for that. It’s a revolutionary idea, and this lucid book explains why.”
—Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs
Latest In The Media
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...
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 LucasMearian.
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.
Book Reviews
Fintech Innovation and Disruption. Blockchain Insights with Don and Alex Tapscott
By @Simonco*cking. Having recently reviewed their new book on Blockchain we thought it would be interesting to find out a little more about the dynamic Tapscott duo behind the book. Here is our exclusive interview with them. Read the full interview on Irish Tech...
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Blockchain Revolution review – Satoshi Nakamoto’s world-changing innovation
Blockchain, the increasingly celebrated peer-to-peer data technology, is the basis of bitcoin and has huge potential – will it be as big as the web? Proposed in 2008 and launched the following year, bitcoin – a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” – was initially...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
Tech Savvy: How Blockchains Could Transform Management
Business journalist Theodore Kinni has published an article on MIT Sloan Management Review about what's happening between management and technology this week, with some focus on how blockchains can transform management. "The bigger issue is blockchains", he writes,...
Read More
800 CEO Read: Editor’s Choice
800 CEO Read's Dylan Schleicher has given Blockchain Revolution a coveted Editor's Choice designation, calling it a "must-read book on a new revolution". The Tapscotts offer a clear-eyed critique of the Internet’s effect on society and business. Although some...
Read More
