Coming from Portfolio in May 2016
The Portfolio imprint of Penguin Random House has acquired world rights to BLOCKCHAIN REVOLUTION: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World by Don Tapscott, the bestselling author of Wikinomics, and his son Alex Tapscott. This will be the first book to explain why blockchain technology – a truly open, distributed, global platform – will fundamentally change what we can achieve online, how we do it, and who can participate.
Literary agent Wesley Neff at Leighco Inc. negotiated a three-way deal with Adrian Zackheim at Portfolio US, Andrea Magyar at Portfolio Canada, and Joel Rickett at Portfolio UK. Simultaneous publication in all three countries is expected in May 2016.
Over the past thirty years, no theorist of the digital age has better explained the next big thing than Don Tapscott. In Wikinomics (2006) he was the first to show how the Internet provides the first global platform for mass collaboration. Now he writes about a profound technological shift that will change how the world does business – and everything else – using blockchain technology, which powers the digital currency Bitcoin.
The Internet as we know it is great for collaboration and communication, but deeply flawed when it comes to commerce and privacy. The new blockchain technology facilitates peer-to-peer transactions without any intermediary such as a bank or governing body. Keeping the user’s information anonymous, the blockchain validates and keeps a permanent public record of all transactions. This means that personal information is private and secure, while all activity is transparent and incorruptible – reconciled by mass collaboration and stored in code on a digital ledger. In other words we won’t need to trust each other in the traditional sense, because trust is built into the system itself.
Bitcoin is only one application for this great innovation in computer science. The blockchain can hold any legal document, from deeds and marriage licenses to educational degrees and birth certificates. Tapscott calls it “the World Wide Ledger.” It enables smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations, decentralized government services, and transactions among things.
The forthcoming book will show how the blockchain will shape the next era of prosperity in finance, business, healthcare, education, governance, and many other fields.
About the authors:
Don Tapscott is the CEO of the Tapscott Group and one of the most influential living theorists about business and society. In November 2013, Thinkers 50 named him the 4th most important business thinker in the world. A June 2013 Forbes.com analysis of social media identified him as the most influential management thinker in the world. He is the author or co-author of 15 widely read books about new technologies and new media, including Wikinomics and The Digital Economy.
Alex Tapscott is a chartered financial analyst, working in New York and Toronto as vice president of institutional equities, at the investment bank Canaccord Genuity. He is on the faculty of the Global Solutions Network Program conducted by the Martin Prosperity Institute, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He is author of the book, Towards the Breaking Point: The Law and Political Emergency.
Image: FLICKR/DUNCAN RAWLINSON
Is there an Early Access program associated with this book?
Galleys will go out to selected media and jacket quote prospects. For those who advance order the book on amazon they will receive a free digital copy of the Blockchain Revolution Playbook.
Very cool. In that case, I’ll pre-order.
I saw your movie and blog. How great and I will be a follower from now on (thx from the Netherlands)
This sounds like a great book and I am looking forward to reading it. It seems to me that the perfect place to preview it to a business audience is The Block Chain Conference that I am organizing to take place in San Francisco on February 10, 2016. Do you want to come and present the keynote and give a glimpse of what your book will say?
I want a copy! Will pay in BTC :)
Great book! (half way through) I am a 25-yr Silicon Valley entrepreneur; ‘Digital Capital’ was (is) a Bible to me. :-)
Just wanted to point out that you have mixed up the x-axis/y-axis in your description of the Complexity/Automation chart in the ‘Dapp Kings’ section of Chapter 5. [x-axis is horizontal; y-axis is vertical]
I am missing Blockchain Revolution in the German audible.de catalogue. And I cannot buy it from Audible.com, unless I provide a fake US address.
Just came back from a book launch event where Alex Tapscott was speaking – he is incredibly smart, eloquent and easily engages his audience! More importantly, read the first chapter of the book on the way back to the office and can’t put it down!
A must read for anyone who wants to be part of this important next phase of the internet and the future of commerce.
I own a copy of your book and am currently reading it with great interest. I have also read that recently there have been a number of thefts of digital coinage like Bitcoin. Apparently it’s as simple as using a key logger to get the private key for your Bitcoin and then using a “mixer” to transfer the Bitcoin value to a clean key, and then converting it into standard currency.
In other words, the blockchain structure can be accessed by unauthorized people and the information extracted. If other personal information like property ownership can be taken over, what use is the blockchain concept?
I like the idea of personally controlling the access to my data, but there seem to be many ways that my digital data could be accessed, used, or maybe even be destroyed. The security problem seems to be even worse to the point where I wouldn’t even consider putting my personal data into blockchain format. Comments?
Hi there,
It’s important to distinguish hacks as faults in the code of the app used, not faults in the actual blockchain itself. The ecosystem is still very new, and the recent hacks suggest we need well thought out governance structures for digital currencies if we are to move forward with confidence. Bitcoin is just one example of a digital currency, and several central banks are testing the idea of putting fiat currencies on blockchains as well, so that would be another development.
As blockchain is a value transfer, it helps us move and invest money securely. As a perfect concept, the blockchain system is still ironing that out. We discuss in the book that these are not reasons that blockchain is a bad idea, but rather implementation challenges that must be overcome if we are to move forward into this new digital age.
If I want to start a blockchain business, what should I do, taking a course, hiring a consulting firm, etc.? If yes, any suggestions on course and/or consulting providers?
Hi Shu,
There are many different companies doing great work in the blockchain space. I would suggest attending one of many blockchain hackathons occurring around the globe, as these are good primers on the technology, business best practices, and owning a company in the startup space.
Blockchain is an important step for businesses to achieve radical openness with security. What can company owners do to embrace this change quicker, and how might a company become make changes to become “more open” before blockchain becomes mainstream?