Blockchains are an emerging technology pattern that can radically improve banking, supply-chain and other transaction networks, giving them new opportunities for innovation and growth while reducing cost and risk.

Economic transactions on a distributed ledger can be programmed to record virtually anything of value: your identity, a will, a deed, a title, a license, intellectual property, and also almost any type of financial instrument.

How seriously should we take this? I would take it as seriously as we should have taken the concept of the Internet in the 1990s.”