Michael Casey

The world’s largest banks are larger than ever. In a digital era, credit fraud is ever present. Our quaint notions of privacy are ever-more perilous. We can’t look to so-called ‘legacy’ systems for help: they’re ill equipped to keep the economy stable or our lives simple. So we look to the blockchain, argues Michael Casey: a public, common good; a means to transfigure major parts of the economy with an operating system that is, in a word, revolutionary; and a decentralized trust architecture to manage the decentralized economy we’re building. In this keynote, based on his latest book The Truth Machine (the sequel to The Age of Cryptocurrency), Casey unveils the disruptive potential of blockchain for a wide range of industries (shipping, legal, tech, finance, security, and beyond). Essentially, blockchain offers more trust, and more control: to personal actors worried about data, identity, or assets; to those excluded by the unfair distributions of globalism; and to society itself, long in need of a restoration of faith in its capacity to order, manage, and plan. It’s not without its challenges, of course—and Casey is sure to discuss the threats to employment, public interest, and social cohesion that are coming. But with rich, fascinating examples, he champions the need for this utterly transparent, digital, radical model to pass over and replace broken and unreliable institutions and their self-serving middlemen. This is about empowerment, Casey says: a way to move humanity forward into a world of decentralized, more reliable technology.

Bitcoin became a buzzword overnight. It pops up in headlines and fuels endless media debate. Yet it seems few people truly understand what it is. In this economics keynote, blockchain speaker Michael Casey delivers the definitive answer to the question: Why should anyone care about bitcoin? The “blockchain” technology behind cryptocurrencies holds the promise of a financial system without middlemen—a change that’s 500 years in the making. It puts that system in the control of the people who use it, safeguarding them from a 2008-type crash. Much more than a new digital form of currency, this technology could integrate billions of hitherto excluded people into the global economy, restore individuals’ control over their private data and identities, and change the way organizations and business relationships are governed.When coupled with mobile money apps, Big Data-driven banking services, decentralized e-marketplaces, and countless fintech innovations aimed at breaking big banks’ dominance, the blockchain’s core concept of a distributed ledger of information could reinvent the economy as we know it. The potential savings from this disruptive technology are so big that the World Economic Forum predicts that as much as 10 percent of world GDP will be transacted over it by 2025. Casey is an economics speaker with lucidity and verve: he makes this unfamiliar but important topic accessible, and teaches us what we need to know to be ready for this big shift.

Today, we have far less control over the flow, distribution, or quantity of information than ever before. And social media—the most transformative change to communications since the Gutenberg bible—requires a radically new framework to fully understand it. Enter Michael Casey. In his book The Social Organism, he argues that social media functions much like a living organism. In this keynote, Casey celebrates the organic spread of information, and offers eye-opening insights into how you can embrace, rather than resist, the zeitgeist. It means moving to an open, decentralized structure, allowing your brand to be adapted and replicated by the public. It means creating worlds other people actually want to build upon. And it means creating the right environment and tools for your customers to become your best ambassadors—getting into people’s heads (and hearts) like never before. With reference to massive brands, memes, online humor, and the new celebrities of the YouTube era, Casey offers a invigorating new way of making sense of the digital world for business leaders, marketers, and everyone else online.