The Growing Buzz About Blockchain

A lot has already been written about blockchain and what it is, but for those who need a quick refresher, Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani provided this summation in the January-February 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review, “The Truth About Blockchain”: “The technology at the heart of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically.” What we’re seeing in the industry today, though, is that many insurers are moving away from foundational questions about the technology and progressing towards questions about real-world implementation into their businesses.