Lawyers are annoying. I would know: I’m one of them. We are so annoying in fact that they are the subject of endless jokes, some of which are quite funny. But lawyers will not be replaced by blockchain technologies. Neither will accountants, bankers, or any other job role. Rather these job roles will be “disrupted” meaning that their current essential roles will change. An example might help… From computers to computers Until the 1950s, “computers” were largely assumed to be humans. That’s right: humans who computed data. Starting from advances made during World…

Earlier this summer, the diamond company deBeers, which sells about 35% of the world’s mined diamonds and is owned by the massive mining company Anglo American, piloted a blockchain network called Tracr. It’s purpose? Track diamonds from the mine to the consumer. It worked so well that they are going to offer access to the system to every diamond mine, middleman, and retailer in the world. Why is this such a big deal if it works? In 2000, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) was created in response to so-called blood diamonds, those diamonds whose sale…

The civil war in Syria. The December 2004 tsunami. The 2011 East Africa drought. What do all of these have in common? Each was a crisis that caused the displacement of more than 100,000 people. Each put a massive strain on the resources of their neighboring countries to house them. Each required large-scale donations to NGOs and IGOs for the provision of food, medical care, and other necessities to these populations. In times of war and crisis, one of the biggest challenges is the widespread movement of civilians out of…

The transformation of record-keeping will have consequences we can’t begin to imagine Predictions abound about the myriad ways that blockchain will revolutionize the business world — from currency to transportation to banking to law. The most important effect that blockchain will have, however, is the one that gets the least attention. And the last time such a big change happened in the field, it led to the greatest global commercial, artistic, and intellectual expansion in the history of the world. Double-entry bookkeeping and the birth of accounting The field of accounting owes almost its entire existence to the creation of double-entry bookkeeping. It is believed that the double-entry system…