The Blockchain and Us: The Project

When the Wright brothers invented the airplane in 1903, it was hard to imagine there would be over 500,000 people traveling in the air at any point in time today. In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin and the blockchain. For the first time in history, his invention made it possible to send money around the globe without banks, governments or any other intermediaries. Satoshi is a mystery character, and just like the Wright brothers, he solved an unsolvable problem. The concept of the blockchain isn’t very intuitive. But still, many people believe it is a game changer. Despite its mysterious beginnings, the blockchain might be the airplane of our time.

Manuel Stagars portrays this exciting technology in interviews with software developers, cryptologists, researchers, entrepreneurs, consultants, VCs, authors, politicians, and futurists from the United States, Canada, Switzerland, the UK, and Australia.

How can the blockchain benefit the economies of nations? How will it change society? What does this mean for each of us? The Blockchain and Us is no explainer video of the technology. It gives a view on the topic, makes it accessible and starts a conversation about its potential wider implications in a non-technical way. The film deliberately poses more questions than it answers. For a deep dive, see all full-length interviews from the film here. Additional information about the project is in the Q&A and Disclaimer.

Stills from the Film

A Project by Manuel Stagars

Award-winning Film Director / Author / Podcaster / Entrepreneur / Economist—Telling stories about emerging technologies.

 Conversations about science, technology, and the future that inspire people.

Manuel Stagars is an award-winning Swiss filmmaker with twenty years of hands-on experience as an entrepreneur in the digital startup scene. He has a background in economics and finance as an advisor and as a senior researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).

Manuel has lived and worked in Europe, America, and Asia and began directing and producing films in 2005 in Los Angeles to explore new modes of communication about society, science, and technology. He has written books on startups, marketplace lending, impact investing, data quality, and Open Data published by Wiley Finance, Palgrave Macmillan, and Apress, a division of Springer-Nature.

Manuel’s documentary films have reached hundreds of thousands of people. His films have screened internationally, including at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in Melbourne at the Transitions Film Festival, in Vienna at the Open Everything Film Festival, in Amsterdam at the Fraude Film Festival, in London at the Everyman Theatre, in Minneapolis at the Analytics and Financial Innovation Conference (AXFI), in Zurich at Tech Tuesday, and in Tokyo at the Swiss Chamber of Commerce an Industry (SCCIJ). They have been translated into Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.

www.manuelstagars.com

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