Antony Lewis is a bitcoin and blockchain consultant for Ernst & Young, and was previously director of business development at bitcoin exchange itBit.
In this article, Lewis attempts to explain the difference between the revolutionary disruptive innovation of bitcoin and the evolutionary innovations of blockchain industry workflow tools. For this post, I will use the phrase "industry workflow tools" instead of industry blockchains, as some of the emerging solutions being proposed in this space are not blockchains (eg: R3’s Corda is not a blockchain but DAH’s solutions are – both companies are proposing industry workflow tools).
But, just as it’s not helpful to call Twitter and Microsoft Sharepoint "database companies" although they both use variations of databases, it’s not helpful to call cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency companies, blockchain platforms and industry workflow tool companies "blockchain companies", although this frequently happens in the popular press.
Why? Because you don’t want to create misunderstandings like "But I thought you could only use 140 characters in Sharepoint?"
To be clear, both cryptocurrencies and industry workflow tools both have admirable objectives in their own ways for their own purposes. But then again, so do Twitter and Sharepoint. Disruptive innovation: Public cryptocurrencies
The purpose of bitcoin, according to Satoshi Nakamoto’s original white paper is to create "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash [which] would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution".
This is new and radically different to anything that has ever existed before. It is meant to enable value to be held electronically without any third party involved, and to allow for value to be transmitted without a specific third party being able to censor the transaction at will.
The problem statement is: How do we use technology to create a financially inclusive system that anyone can […]
