Paolo is a FinTech economist specialising in P2P financial systems. He has served as an advisor on blockchain technologies for different international organisations including the EU Parliament and the United Nations. Paolo is founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Blockchain Technologies (UCL CBT) at University College London.

To the eyes of the most, blockchain is simply Bitcoin and the speculative hangover and irrational bubbles in the cryptocurrency market. The few interpret blockchain through the lens of Information  Communication Technologies, as a new technology that enables people to use a decentralised ledger to record ownership of on/off platform assets and rights/obligations arising from agreements. 

But what is generally less comprehended is that blockchain can also be understood through the lens of institutional economics; and as such, it is a tool that can be used to decentralised governance structures for coordinating people and making economic transactions. This is the most powerful innovative aspect of blockchain that will change our business models in the years to come and will force our historical economic, political and legal formal institutions to redesign their institutional settings and frameworks.