While bitcoin and blockchain may sound like something from science fiction, they have become powerful tools to help us rethink banking and finance. What began as a cypherpunk vision has become a viable model of currency and exchange for everyone with access to a Smartphone, from the unbanked in Afghanistan to the urban hipster in New York City.
Eager to learn more about where bitcoin and blockchain technology has come from and where it is headed, co-authors Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna researched and wrote the bestselling book, The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain are Challenging the Global Economic Order. In this interview, Michael J. Casey, Senior Advisor to the Digital Currency Initiative at the Media Lab at MIT and former global finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal, shares what they learned and why we should care.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Connections to science fiction, cryptography, and cypherpunks
- The blockchain and bitcoin origin story
- What it means to decentralize the banking system
- The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto
- Trust and the huge role it plays in launching a new currency
- How it all started when someone bought a pizza
- What bitcoin and blockchain mean for us as customers and as business owners
- How blockchain and bitcoin can upend industries from medicine to music
- What this tech means for the poor and unbanked
- How mobile tech, bitcoin, and blockchain are empowering millions
- Ways Wall Street is already co-opting ledger tech for its own purposes
- How this tech will govern the economy of the future
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