Despite the speculative hype around cryptocurrencies, the blockchain concepts underpinning them pose enormous potential to a rapidly changing digital economy. Blockchain technology, Michael Casey argues, offers a decentralized trust foundation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, enabling disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things to securely drive computational and economic control to the edges of our digital and social networks. He describes blockchain technology as an indispensable trust foundation for a global society that’s losing confidence in centralized institutions yet fearful of the encroachment of autonomous machines into their lives.