“I really felt, looking out, that there weren’t enough books that provided a clear introduction both deep enough to give some understanding of the mechanics and yet accessible to a non-expert. I also thought that there wasn’t much material that really put blockchain in the context of the business value proposition—not just telling the story with a bunch of examples, but saying, ‘What is it that this does for people in the firms that use this technology above and beyond the surface things, like I’m using it to pay or I’m using it because I’m investing in something that I think will go up?’
I also felt there wasn’t enough of a conversation about the legal, regulatory and governance questions. There was basically a community saying that blockchain makes law irrelevant, because we can do—through encryption and cryptography and software code—what law has done badly in the past. Then, on the other side, there’s a community of people saying, ‘This is all just a community of scammers and lawbreakers and criminals.’
I think there’s a middle ground. As I said before, I really think we in the legal and policy community can learn a lot about other things from studying what is happening in the blockchain world.”
The book, according to the author