Blockchain Babel: The Crypto Craze and the Challenge to Business (eng)

WINNER: Independent Press Award 2020 - Technology Category

Blockchain is the technology behind bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. According to Santander, it could save financial institutions $15-20bn a year from 2022 onward. Most experts see an unprecedented potential, but many banks, payment processors and credit card companies fret that bitcoin entrepreneurs could cast a pall over their core business. Whatever the position of blockchain, many voices are shouting from different angles, creating a cacophony of confusion including tech-evangelists, anarcho-libertarians and industry experts. But while everybody in IT and banking seems to have an opinion on the blockchain, there is little systematic research, no strategic analysis. Blockchain Babel is the ultimate guide to the most disruptive technology to have entered the finance industry in recent years.

Blockchain Babel looks at blockchain alongside innovation diffusion, competitive dynamics and management strategy. Shortlisted as one of the three best business book proposals by McKinsey and the Financial Times for the Bracken Bower Prize in 2016, this is a must-read for business leaders and aspiring leaders wanting to grasp blockchain and put it into context and understand the practical implications it may have.

Igor Pejic is a leading expert on tech-driven shifts in banking and finance. He is the author of Blockchain Babel, finalist of the 2016 Bracken Bower Prize, and winner of the Independent Press Award 2020 (technology category). Blockchain Babel was also a Financial Times book of the month.

Pejic is the publisher of the valued industry newsletter, The New Frontier, and his articles and interviews regularly appear in media such as the New York Times, the American Banker, Bloomberg and PwC's strategy+business. A worldwide keynote speaker and expert-panelist, he talks at large conferences, private industry events and academic lectures. He has created online-courses, whitepapers and bespoke analytic research about the long-term strategic impact of new tech.

He has held different management positions in banking and payments, currently at one of the largest banking groups in Europe. He worked previously as a management consultant advising Fortune 100 companies, as a business journalist and as a lecturer at the University of Vienna.