Governments eye their own blockchain cryptocurrencies
Last year's blockchain pilot projects are rapidly becoming this year's live implementations in a variety of industries, and even sectors that have until now been vexed by the distributed ledger technology are following suit.
Case in point: Governments, which are moving to regulate blockchain technology and the cryptocurrencies it underpins.
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin that live in open networks, have so far inhabited a regulatory gray area, because there's no way for a central authority to track users. The distributed ledgers, however, are useful because they can enable cross-border transactions over peer-to-peer networks in real time, anywhere in the world – without a central governing authority such as a bank or credit card company.