Latest Read: The Business Blockchain

William Mougayar’s new book The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology provides a blueprint overview that compliments Tapscott’s Blockchain Revolution previously reviewed. Mougayar is able to specifically touch on the Blockchain’s architecture. Tapscott painted with a wide brush addressing everything possible with the Blockchain’s decentralized trust solution.
Mougayar moves slightly forward addressing v 3.0 aimed at audiences wider than banking. A key view is that Blockchain will not just be for the enterprise. This will create a new crypto economy. It will be interesting to watch this grow. Care to take a live look? Here is the blockchain.info site.

He views the blockchain will revolutionize the roles of existing financial intermediaries including PayPal. Blockchains will force change upon them. They can adapt or die like the dinosaurs. Blockchains will disrupt oldschool, imperial organizations as the trust boundary shifts value away from them after hundreds of years.

Banks are clearly the key target of the blockchain infrastructure. To no surprise even the Federal Reserve has been given a blockchain briefing in June. The focus byMougayar beyond another blockchain overview is a breakdown of trust, obstacles and challenges to the Blockchain technology. The issue is much stronger in the financial services marketplace as Wall Street and international banks are now testing blockchains. He touches briefly implementing Blockchain technologies and closes by pushing the message of decentralization as a key in moving forward.

BothMougayar and Tapscott point to trust and transparency as requirements. Society and institutions threatened by Blockchain will resist by nature. It is no surprise that change is hard. For banks the loss of power will be an interesting read as to their adoption. But with the 2007 market crash and casualties like Bear Sterns, how can they just sit on the sidelines? Just as important is for laws to efficiently change or we stand to see how current laws are obsolete by technology. I point to the FBI/Apple issue that Director James Comey pointed to The All Writs Act introduced the same year George Washington became our nation’s first President. The Blockchain needs to address this type of legal obsolescence.

The Business Blockchain looks at delivering “proof of everything” and in the world of big data clouds this is certainly achievable. IMHO Tapscott in his wider brush actually illustrates this point more effectively. His simple example is a blockchain of foodstuff. Want to know the source ingredients of a hamburger from your local grocery store? The blockchain will have the delivery of that key information available to any consumer.

I did enjoy Mougayar’s role of Distributed Autonomous Organizations in the blockchain. He does acknowledge this organization remains in its infancy. In a larger picture Mougayar shares the core elements of the technology, blockchains are non-stop computers. Upon launch the systems on premises or in the cloud never go down providing strong resiliency. Blockchains are dependable in both public and private solutions as a ledger. The Business Blockchain is an invitation for technologists to better understand the business potential of the blockchain, and for business minded people to grasp the many facets of blockchain technology. This book teaches you how to think about the blockchain.