I found this report written by the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser that makes recommendations to the government on how it should view this technology and plan for its inclusion in the future of the UK and the wider world:
It's very interesting to see how seriously the UK government is taking this technology and how they view the potential threats that it proposes. This paragraph in particular stood out to me:
‘Distributed ledgers have the potential to be radically disruptive. Their processing capability is real time, near tamper-proof and increasingly low-cost. They can be applied to a wide range of industries and services, such as financial services, real estate, healthcare and identity management. They can underpin other software- and hardware-based innovations such as smart contracts and the Internet of Things. Furthermore, their underlying philosophy of distributed consensus, open source, transparency and community could be highly disruptive to many of these sectors. Like any radical innovation, as well as providing opportunities distributed ledgers create threats to those who fail or are unable to respond. In particular, through their distributed consensual nature they may be perceived as threatening the role of trusted intermediaries in positions of control within traditionally hierarchical organisations such as banks and government departments.’
I think that it is important to keep a close eye on what moves governments around the world are making in regards to cryptocurrencies, especially if you have a lot of money invested in them, as they are well aware of the disruptive capabilities they bring and will almost certainly try and contain that power in some form.
Does anybody know of other documentation that their governments have produced? please link and let me know your thoughts!
Thanks