William Mougayar Unveils His New Book The Business Blockchain at Consensus 2016 in New York

Mougayar will moderate two sessions and organizers to giveaway 500 copies at the conference taking place May 2-4.

William Mougayar is pleased to announce the publication of his new book The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology (WILEY; May 2016; Hardcover; $27.95: ISBN: 978-1-119-30031-1) at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2016 conference. In addition to the book launch, Mougayar will moderate the “Internal Approaches for Blockchain Strategies” keynote session, where a special group of corporate executives will discuss their initiatives surrounding blockchain technology. William will also host a session titled, “Setting Enterprise Standards in a Multi-Blockchain World” where 160 roundtable attendees will debate insights into the future of blockchain standards.

See the full agenda here: http://www.coindesk.com/events/consensus-2016/agenda/

The book giveaway will take place on the second day of the conference, Tuesday May 3rd, from 11:30am-12:30pm on the 6th floor of the New York Marriott Marquis hotel near the event’s lunch area, where William Mougayar and Vitalik Buterin who wrote the book’s foreword will be available to sign copies.

In his new book The Business Blockchain with a foreword by Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s inventor, long time industry insider William Mougayar charts new territory in advancing our understanding of the blockchain by unpacking its elements like no other before.

Mougayar makes two strategic assertions in this book. First, the blockchain has polymorphic characteristics; its application will result in a multiplicity of effects. Second, we shouldn’t ask ourselves what problems the blockchain solves, because that gives us a narrow view on its potential. Rather, we should imagine new opportunities, and tackle even more ambitious problems that cross organizational, regulatory and mental boundaries.

Mougayar explains,

“Blockchains are new technology layers that rewire the Internet and threaten to side-step older legacy constructs and centrally served businesses. At its core, a blockchain injects trust into the network, cutting off some intermediaries from serving that function and creatively disrupting how they operate.”

Just as the Internet created new possibilities that we didn’t foresee in its early years, the blockchain will give rise to new business models and ideas that may still be invisible. Mougayar anticipates a future that consists of thousands, if not millions of blockchains that will enable not only frictionless value exchange, but also a new flow of value, redefining roles, relationships, power and governance.

“The blockchain disrupts the traditional boundaries of value and its exchange methods. Blockchains will become invisible, and we’ll talk more about what they enable,” Mougayar adds.

“Blockchains will allow us to perform the equivalent of “googling” to prove the existence or authenticity of records, identities, ownerships, rights, work done, titles, contracts and almost any process, service or product.”

In this book, Mougayar explains in non-technical terms, the key concepts behind the blockchain: distributed consensus, state machines, smart contracts, smart property, oracles, scalability, decentralized applications, distributed autonomous organizations, and the resulting impact on our privacy, security, online identity, financial services, healthcare, energy, government and governance models.

Some highlights from the book include:

- 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.

The Business Blockchain is an invitation for technologists to better understand the business potential of the blockchain, and for business minded people to grasp the many facets of blockchain technology. For more information, please visit the book’s website, or order the book on Amazon.

Author Information

William Mougayar (Toronto, Canada) is a known entrepreneur, investor, blogger, mentor and advisor to startups and enterprises, focusing on blockchain technologies, decentralization and peer-to-peer models. For the past 2.5 years, William has written extensively about Bitcoin, Blockchains, Cryptocurrency and Decentralization. He has been described as one of the most original and deep thinker on the business applications of the blockchain.

William is the General Partner at Virtual Capital Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund, and currently on the Board of Directors of OB1, the OpenBazaar open source protocol that is pioneering decentralized peer-to-peer commerce. He is also a Board Advisor to OMERS Ventures, Coin Center and the Ethereum Foundation. Previously, he held senior level positions at Hewlett-Packard, Cognizant and Aberdeen Group, and he founded 3 startups, CYBERManagement, Eqentia, and Engagio.

The Business Blockchain: http://www.thebusinessblockchain.com/