About - Institute for Blockchain Studies Website

The Institute for Blockchain Studies is an independent non-profit research institute examining the theoretical, philosophical, and societal implications of blockchain technology (the technology underlying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies).

The blockchain is not just about Bitcoin and digital cash, it is an information technology, on the order of the Internet. Bitcoin 1.0 is digital currency. Bitcoin 2.0 is contracts: the whole slate of economic, market, and financial applications, reinvented and made more efficient and scalable using the blockchain (stocks, bonds, futures, loans, mortgages, titles, smart property). Bitcoin 3.0 is blockchain applications in government, health, science, literacy, culture, and art. The blockchain is a new organizing paradigm for the discovery, transfer, and recording of all quanta (discrete units) of anything, and the decentralized coordination mechanism to possibly scale humanity to its next levels of progress.