I have been interested in blockchain (the technology that provides the technical foundation for both Bitcoin and other cyber currencies) for some time. If you aren’t interested in blockchain, you should be. Whether or not it ends up being the technology that underlies the way we pay for goods, it will have a tremendous influence on what the future of payments looks like.
I have read/listened to numerous presentations on the subject– usually technical in nature. I found the following three presentations by David Yermack (Chairman of the Department of Finance at NYU Stern School of Business) thought provoking. He looks at the technology from a financial markets perspective which provides a very nice complement/contrast to the usual technical orientation of most of what I have seen/heard until his lectures.
While he plays a bit fast and loose with his descriptions (from a technical perspective) and assertions (from a business perspective— I was left feeling that with more detail, I would have more confidence that he had really thought this through), the overall affect is to give one a lot to think about (and most certainly not always agree with)– this presentation focuses on the subject from a finance professor’s perspective and it is different in that sense from other things I have run into, in good way.
The first lecture focuses on the question: What is blockchain? And, those of you who have a good understanding of the technology might want to skip it.
I listened to these lectures at 1.5x normal (a nice feature of YouTube) and it both decreased the time necessary to watch them and didn’t reduce my comprehension of the material one little bit:)
Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irc-VMuUs3c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k46mcsS8tqY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lKQHsLtzAg
Copyright 2017 Howard Niden
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