It seems as if everyone is talking about the potential of the blockchain. The transmission of funds without an intermediary was just the beginning. Just a year ago that seemed to be an obscure side show, today it’s becoming the main event. As governments, industries, companies, and individuals begin to see the true power of the blockchain, it’s only a matter of time until this disruptive technology reaches into every facet of our lives.

There are many signals that are now alerting us to just how important this technology is, how wide-reaching the benefits will be and how it will change how things get done.
Here are the thoughts of 20 industry leaders who see the transformative power of the blockchain:

1. “Blockchain will have a huge impact on the technology sector, hailing it as…the next major IT revolution that is about to happen”

   – Steve Wazniak, Apple Co-Founder

2. “Blockchain is a technological tour de force.”

   -Bill Gates

3. “Trust is the new currency, blockchain will enable that trust.”

   -Tim Vasko, Founder BlockCerts International

4. “The biggest opportunity set we can think of over the next decade.”

   – Bob Grifeld, CEO NASDAQ

5. “The main event isn’t bitcoin. It’s using the blockchain to disrupt other industries and Wall Street.”

   – Patrick M. Byrne

6. “Anything that can conceive of as a supply chain, blockchain can vastly improve its efficiency- it doesn’t matter if its people, numbers, data, money.”

   -Ginni Rometty, CEO IBM

7. “I’ve been at this 35-years, writing about the digital age. I’ve never seen a technology that I thought had greater potential for humanity.”

   – Don Tapscott, Writer

8. “The blockchain cannot be described just as a revolution. It is a tsunami-like phenomenon, slowly advancing and gradually enveloping everything along its way by the force of its progression.”

   -William Mougayar

9. “Blockchain is the tech. Bitcoin is merely the first mainstream manifestation of its potential.”

   – Marc Kenigsberg, founder of Bitcoin Chaser

10. “Blockchain technology isn’t just a more efficient way to settle securities. It will fundamentally change market structures, and maybe even the architecture of the Internet itself.”

    -Abigail Johnson

11. “Everything will be tokenized and connected by a blockchain one day.”

    – Fred Ehrsam

12. “[Virtual Currencies] may hold long-term promise, particularly if the innovations promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system.”

    – Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve

13. “Trusted third parties are security holes.”

    – Nick Szabo (inventor of Bit gold, a precursor to Bitcoin)

14. “As I was looking around, to me, what was happening in the blockchain and crypto world was a movement.”

    -Brad Garlinghouse

15. “The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.”

    – Don & Alex Tapscott, authors Blockchain Revolution (2016)

16. “Almost any illiquid asset today lends itself well to moving onto the blockchain and becoming tokenized. It will create a deeper market with improved price discovery and should increase the value of those assets.”

    – David O. Sacks

17. “We have elected to put our money and faith in a mathematical framework that is free of politics and human error.”

    – Tyler Winklevoss, Co-creator of Facebook

18. “You should be taking this technology as seriously as you should have been taking the development of the Internet in the early 1990’s.”

    – Blythe Masters (investment banker)As governments, industries, companies, and individuals begin to see the true power of the blockchain, it’s only a matter of time until this disruptive technology reaches into every facet of our lives.TWEET THIS

19. “Cryptography shifts the balance of power from those with a monopoly on violence to those who comprehend mathematics and security design.”

    – Jacob Appelbaum (activist and core member of the Tor project)

20. “There is an opportunity to recreate the financial world as we know it in the parallel universe that is the blockchain. We are writing rules for this whole new universe.”

    – Patrick M. Byrne