Today, May 9th 2016 marks the date that my book, The Business Blockchain is officially released on Amazon. This is the day that you would start receiving the hardcover copy if you pre-ordered it, in North America. The European release is scheduled for May 18. However, the Kindle version has been available for worldwide downloads as of April 29th, and I've been fulfilling the pre-orders from the Kickstarter campaign and Shopify purchases since then.The book reviews are trickling in, and there are more coming. Here are the last 3:
- Book: The Business Blockchain - Brad Feld, FeldThoughts.
- The Business Blockchain - Fred Wilson, AVC.com.
- The Business Blockchain by William Mougayar - Book Review - Ian Allison, IB Times.
Last week, at the Consensus 2016 conference in New York, the conference organizers gifted 500 copies to the attendees, and I spent 2.5 hours signing each one of them. It was exhilarating but rewarding to see the long line-up and tremendous interest around it. I spoke to each person, even for 20 seconds. Here's a photo from that moment.
Then, last week, I woke-up Friday morning pleasantly surprised to see the book reach #1 status in 3 large categories, Banking and Finance. Definitely, the book is striking a chord with the financial services community, since my previous slideshare deck analyzing Blockchain and Financial Services has reached 188,000 views.
So, what's in the book? It's about 45,000 words, divided in the following 7 chapters.1. What is the Blockchain?2. How Blockchain Trust Infiltrates3. Obstacles, Challenges & Mental Blocks4. Blockchain in Financial Services5. Lighthouse Industries & New Intermediaries6. Implementing Blockchain Technology7. Decentralization as the Way Forward
What else can you expect in the book?
- How to think holistically about the blockchain as a meta technology, a business model disruptor, and legal/regulatory policies challenger.
- The 10 properties exhibited by the blockchain (beyond its most popular one, as a distributed ledger)
- Blockchains as a new Internet layer, comprised of the new breed of decentralized applications.
- The unbundling of trust and how a new form of trust inserts itself between peer-to-peer relationships, and brings a new level of transparency, trust and truth.
- The rise of New Intermediaries. Just as the Internet replaced some intermediaries, now the blockchain is replacing other intermediaries, while simultaneously creating new ones.
- Industry cases in healthcare, energy and government, including an in-depth review of financial services.
- Practical recommendations for implementing the blockchain within the enterprise.
- The blockchain as the operating system that enables decentralization, and its technological, political and societal implications.
- The birth of a crypto economy that creates its own wealth via new business models, and peer-to-peer transactional relationships between producers and consumers.
- A new flow of value, with the blockchain acting as the digital leveler that moves value across a new variety of markets.
- 47 blockchain predictions about a not-so-distant future, when blockchain technology permeates our world and creates new companies and new services.
Finally, I opened a new book site where you can follow everything related to the book, reviews, events, and where I'm speaking.