Blockchain
Transforming Your Business and Our World

The internet was envisaged as a decentralised global network, but in the past 25 years it has come to be controlled by a few, very powerful, centralised companies. Blockchain is a technological paradigm shift that allows secure, reliable, and direct information transfer between individuals, organisations, and things, so that we can manage, verify, and control the use of our own data.

Blockchain also offers a new opportunity for humanity to fix some major problems. It can authenticate data, manage its analysis, and automate its use. With better data comes better decision-making. In this way, Blockchain can contribute to solving climate change, reduce voting fraud, fix our identity systems, improve fair trade, and give the poor an opportunity to improve their lives by monetising their (digital) capital. A world built upon peer-to-peer transactions and smart contracts can empower individuals and communities.

This book offers a fresh perspective with which to consider this transformative technology. It describes how Blockchaincan optimise the processes that run our society. It provides practical solutions to global problems and offers a roadmap to incorporate Blockchain in your business. It offers a blueprint for a better world. Filled with easy-to-understand examples, this book shows how Blockchain can take over where the internet has fallen short.

Foreword by Patrick M. Byrne

1. Blockchain and Wicked Problems

2. What is the Blockchain?

3. Blockchain and Identity

4. Blockchain and Poverty

5. Blockchain and Corruption, tax evasion and money laundering

6. Blockchain and Climate Change

7. Blockchain and Fair Trade

8. Blockchain and Voting Fraud

9. Blockchain and Censorship

10. The Convergence of Exponential Technologies

Mark van Rijmenam is Founder and CEO of Datafloq and Imagjn, author and speaker, the Netherlands.

Philippa Ryan is a Barrister and Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.