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Drew Jankowski
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Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott

11/6/2018

 
Blockchain and Bitcoin have sat in the background of my mind for awhile. I recently decided I want to dive in and learn a lot more on the subject. I grabbed Blockchain Revolution after seeing solid reviews on Amazon. It's a broad overview, covering design principles, possible future applications, and challenges. Its outlook is sunny, but it was a good dive into the affected industries, businesses, and people. I look forward to continuing my research.

Key Takeaways
  • Bitcoin and blockchain have a wide range of potential applications.
  • In internet terms, we're in 1990 with Blockchain and bitcoin. Nobody knows how things will change and develop in the next 10 years.
  • Blockchain could disrupt any black box, aggregation of power, or collection of data.
  • Democratization and disintermediation seem to be the two most important processes of blockchain.
  • We can think of blockchain as a new system of transacting online. The designers and builders of this system imbue it with trust. I don't need to trust you to do business with you anymore, I just need to trust that the system works.

Memorable Quotes
  • We believe that blockchain technology could be an important tool for protecting and preserving humanity and the rights of every human being, a means of communicating the truth, distributing prosperity, and—as the network rejects the fraudulent transactions—of rejecting those early cancerous cells from a society that can grow into the unthinkable.
  • Creating a complete picture of a company financial health, by looking at periodic financial statements, is like turning a hamburger into a cow.
  • Bitcoin or other digital currency isn’t saved in a file somewhere; it’s represented by transactions recorded in a blockchain—kind of like a global spreadsheet or ledger, which leverages the resources of a large peer-to-peer bitcoin network to verify and approve each bitcoin transaction.
  • Online, we still can’t reliably establish one another’s identities or trust one another to transact and exchange money without validation from a third party like a bank or a government. These same intermediaries collect our data and invade our privacy for commercial gain and national security.
  • Who is going to invest in a company that shows you what’s going on quarterly, compared to one that shows you what’s going on all the time?
  • We have growing wealth creation and growing social inequality.
  • Privacy is the foundation of free societies.

Rating: 7.5/10
This book is broad and high level. It was a good place to start for me, but I still have a lot of questions, technical and otherwise. I look forward to diving into more details and understanding further.

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