How the blockchain—a system built on foundations of mutual mistrust—can become trustworthy The blockchain entered the world on January 3, 2009, introducing an innovative new trust architecture: an environment in which users trust a system—for example, a shared ledger of information—without necessarily trusting any of its components. The cryptocurrency Bitcoin is the most famous implementation of the blockchain, but hundreds of other companies have been founded and billions of dollars have been invested in similar applications since Bitcoin’s launch. Some see the blockchain as offering more opportunities for criminal behavior than benefits to society. In this book, Kevin Werbach shows how a technology resting on foundations of mutual mistrust can become trustworthy. The blockchain, built on open software and decentralized foundations that allow anyone to participate, seems like a threat to any form of regulation. In fact, Werbach argues, law and the blockchain need each other. Blockchain systems that ignore law and governance are likely to fail, or to become outlaw technologies irrelevant to the mainstream economy. That, Werbach cautions, would be a tragic waste of potential. If, however, we recognize the blockchain as a kind of legal technology that shapes behavior in new ways, it can be harnessed to create tremendous business and social value.

Blockchain technology is powering our future. As the technology behind cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and Facebook's Libra, open software platforms like Ethereum, and disruptive companies like Ripple, it’s too important to ignore. In this revelatory book, Don Tapscott, the bestselling author of Wikinomics, and his son, blockchain expert Alex Tapscott, bring us a brilliantly researched, highly readable, and essential book about the technology driving the future of the economy. Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolution­ary protocol that allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure by maintaining a tamperproof public ledger of value. Though it’s best known as the technology that drives bitcoin and other digital cur­rencies, it also has the potential to go far beyond currency, to record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certifi­cates to insurance claims, land titles, and even votes. Blockchain is also essential to understand if you’re an artist who wants to make a living off your art, a consumer who wants to know where that hamburger meat really came from, an immigrant who’s tired of paying big fees to send money home to your loved ones, or an entrepreneur looking for a new platform to build a business. And those examples are barely the tip of the iceberg. As with major paradigm shifts that preceded it, blockchain technology will create winners and losers. This book shines a light on where it can lead us in the next decade and beyond.

An introduction to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology; a guide for practitioners and students. Bitcoin and blockchain enable the ownership of virtual property without the need for a central authority. Additionally, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies make up an entirely new class of assets that have the potential for fundamental change in the current financial system. This book offers an introduction to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology from the perspective of monetary economics.

An authoritative introduction to the exciting new technologies of digital money Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies provides a comprehensive introduction to the revolutionary yet often misunderstood new technologies of digital currency. Whether you are a student, software developer, tech entrepreneur, or researcher in computer science, this authoritative and self-contained book tells you everything you need to know about the new global money for the Internet age. How do Bitcoin and its block chain actually work? How secure are your bitcoins? How anonymous are their users? Can cryptocurrencies be regulated? These are some of the many questions this book answers. It begins by tracing the history and development of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and then gives the conceptual and practical foundations you need to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin network as well as to integrate ideas from Bitcoin into your own projects. Topics include decentralization, mining, the politics of Bitcoin, altcoins and the cryptocurrency ecosystem, the future of Bitcoin, and more. An essential introduction to the new technologies of digital currency Covers the history and mechanics of Bitcoin and the block chain, security, decentralization, anonymity, politics and regulation, altcoins, and much more Features an accompanying website that includes instructional videos for each chapter, homework problems, programming assignments, and lecture slides Also suitable for use with the authors' Coursera online course Electronic solutions manual (available only to professors)

Handbook of Research on Blockchain Technology presents the latest information on the adaptation and implementation of Blockchain technologies in real world business, scientific, healthcare and biomedical applications. The book's editors present the rapid advancements in existing business models by applying Blockchain techniques. Novel architectural solutions in the deployment of Blockchain comprise the core aspects of this book. Several use cases with IoT, biomedical engineering, and smart cities are also incorporated. As Blockchain is a relatively new technology that exploits decentralized networks and is used in many sectors for reliable, cost-effective and rapid business transactions, this book is a welcomed addition on existing knowledge. Financial services, retail, insurance, logistics, supply chain, public sectors and biomedical industries are now investing in Blockchain research and technologies for their business growth. Blockchain prevents double spending in financial transactions without the need of a trusted authority or central server. It is a decentralized ledger platform that facilitates verifiable transactions between parties in a secure and smart way. - Presents the evolution of blockchain, from fundamental theories, to present forms - Explains the concepts of blockchain related to cloud/edge computing, smart healthcare, smart cities and Internet of Things (IoT) - Provides complete coverage of the various tools, platforms and techniques used in blockchain - Explores smart contract tools and consensus algorithms - Covers a variety of applications with real world case studies in areas such as biomedical engineering, supply chain management, and tracking of goods and delivery

"Views differ on bitcoin, but few doubt the transformative potential of Blockchain technology. The Truth Machine is the best book so far on what has happened and what may come along. It demands the attention of anyone concerned with our economic future." —Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard, Former Treasury Secretary From Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna, the authors of The Age of Cryptocurrency, comes the definitive work on the Internet’s Next Big Thing: The Blockchain. Big banks have grown bigger and more entrenched. Privacy exists only until the next hack. Credit card fraud is a fact of life. Many of the “legacy systems” once designed to make our lives easier and our economy more efficient are no longer up to the task. Yet there is a way past all this—a new kind of operating system with the potential to revolutionize vast swaths of our economy: the blockchain. In The Truth Machine, Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna demystify the blockchain and explain why it can restore personal control over our data, assets, and identities; grant billions of excluded people access to the global economy; and shift the balance of power to revive society’s faith in itself. They reveal the disruption it promises for industries including finance, tech, legal, and shipping. Casey and Vigna expose the challenge of replacing trusted (and not-so-trusted) institutions on which we’ve relied for centuries with a radical model that bypasses them. The Truth Machine reveals the empowerment possible when self-interested middlemen give way to the transparency of the blockchain, while highlighting the job losses, assertion of special interests, and threat to social cohesion that will accompany this shift. With the same balanced perspective they brought to The Age of Cryptocurrency, Casey and Vigna show why we all must care about the path that blockchain technology takes—moving humanity forward, not backward.

This open access book contributes to the creation of a cyber ecosystem supported by blockchain technology in which technology and people can coexist in harmony. Blockchains have shown that trusted records, or ledgers, of permanent data can be stored on the Internet in a decentralized manner. The decentralization of the recording process is expected to significantly economize the cost of transactions. Creating a ledger on data, a blockchain makes it possible to designate the owner of each piece of data, to trade data pieces, and to market them. This book examines the formation of markets for various types of data from the theory of market quality proposed and developed by M. Yano. Blockchains are expected to give data itself the status of a new production factor. Bringing ownership of data to the hands of data producers, blockchains can reduce the possibility of information leakage, enhance the sharing and use of IoT data, and prevent data monopoly and misuse. The industry will have a bright future as soon as better technology is developed and when a healthy infrastructure is created to support the blockchain market.

This textbook focuses on distributed ledger technology (DLT) and its potential impact on society at large. It aims to offer a detailed and self-contained introduction to the founding principles behind DLT accessible to a well-educated but not necessarily mathematically oriented audience. DLT allows solving many complicated problems arising in economics, banking, and finance, industry, trade, and other fields. However, to reap the ultimate benefits, one has to overcome some of its inherent limitations and use it judiciously. Not surprisingly, amid increasing applications of DLT, misconceptions are formed over its use. The book thoroughly dispels these misconceptions via an impartial assessment of the arguments rooted in scientific reasoning.Blockchain and Distributed Ledgers: Mathematics, Technology, and Economics offers a detailed and self-contained introduction to DLT, blockchains, and cryptocurrencies and seeks to equip the reader with an ability to participate in the crypto economy meaningfully.

Become a Blockchain developer and design, build, publish, test, maintain and secure scalable decentralized Blockchain projects using Bitcoin, Ethereum, NEO, EOS and Hyperledger. This book helps you understand Blockchain beyond development and crypto to better harness its power and capability. You will learn tips to start your own project, and best practices for testing, security, and even compliance. Immerse yourself in this technology and review key topics such as cryptoeconomics, coding your own Blockchain P2P network, different consensus mechanisms, decentralized ledger, mining, wallets, blocks, and transactions. Additionally, this book provides you with hands-on practical tools and examples for creating smart contracts and dApps for different blockchains such as Ethereum, NEO, EOS, and Hyperledger. Aided by practical, real-world coding examples, you’ll see how to build dApps with Angular utilizing typescript from start to finish, connect to the blockchain network locally on a test network, and publish on the production mainnet environment. Don’t be left out of the next technology revolution – become a Blockchain developer using The Blockchain Developer today. What You’ll Learn Explore the Blockchain ecosystem is and the different consensus mechanisms Create miners, wallets, transactions, distributed networks and DApps Review the main features of Bitcoin: Ethereum, NEO and EOS, and Hyperledger are Interact with popular node clients as well as implementing your own Blockchain Publish and test your projects for security and scalability Who This Book Is For Developers, architects and engineers who are interested in learning about Blockchain or implementing Blockchain into a new greenfield project or integrating Blockchain into a brownfield project. Technical entrepreneurs, technical investors or even executives who want to better understand Blockchain technology and its potential.