Future Now
The IFTF Blog
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Understand the Blockchain in Two Minutes
You’ve heard of bitcoin. It’s a form of digital cash you can send to anyone, even a complete stranger. You may not have heard about bitcoin’s digital ledger, called the blockchain, tracks and validates bitcoin transactions. Blockchain technology has enormous potential beyond bitcoin to automate every type of online transaction that requires a degree of trust. In this short video, produced by Institute for the Future, Olivia Olson (the voice of Marceline the Vampire Queen in Adventure Time) explains how blockchain technology can be used to launch companies that are entirely run by algorithms, make self-driving cars safer, help people manage and protect their online identities, and track the billions of devices on the Internet of Things.
The Blockchain Futures Lab at Institute for the Future is a research initiative and a community for identifying the opportunities and limits of blockchain technologies as well as their social, economic, and political impacts on individuals, organizations, and communities over the coming decades. The program brings together the leading developers of blockchain tools and applications with organizations that seek to understand the implications of this highly disruptive technology—and perhaps also to create parts of the new ecosystem of infrastructures and markets that it will drive.