McKinsey’s interviewed Don Tapscott who defined Blockchain as an “immutable, unhackable distributed database of digital assets” which is a “giant, global spreadsheet that runs on millions and millions of computers.”  The May 2016 article entitled “How blockchains could change the world” included these comments about Bitcoin:

Most blockchains—and Bitcoin is the biggest—are what you call permission-less systems.

We can do transactions and satisfy each other’s economic needs without knowing who the other party is and independent from central authorities.

These blockchains all have a digital currency of some kind associated with them, which is why everybody talks about Bitcoin in the same breath as the blockchain, because the Bitcoin blockchain is the biggest.

Tapscott offered that Blockchain could change the music industry:

What if the new music industry was a distributed app on the blockchain, where I, as a songwriter, could post my song onto the blockchain with a smart contract specifying how it is to be used?

Maybe as a recording artist posting my music on a blockchain music platform, I’ll say, “You listen to the music, it’s free. You want to put it in your movie? It’s going to cost you this much, and here’s how that works. You put it in the movie, the smart contract pays me.” Or how about using it for a ring tone? There’s the smart contract for that.

This is not a pipe dream. Imogen Heap, who’s a brilliant singer-songwriter in the United Kingdom, a best-selling recording artist, has now been part of creating Mycelia, and they’re working with an amazing company called Consensus Systems, that’s all around the world, blockchain developers, using the Ethereum platform; Ethereum is one blockchain. She has already posted her first song onto the Internet. I fully expect that many big recording artists will be seriously investigating a whole new paradigm whereby the musicians get compensated for the value that they create.

Bitcoin is important, but clearly all businesses need to understand the prospects of Blockchain!

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