Sam, Stephanie, The blockchain idea is being explored for several uses beyond BitCoin (and I agree with Sam on the speculative nature of BC - if you're coming to Buenos Aires we could have a beer or three to discuss BC)[1] e.g. Omni (formerly Mastercoin). It is a useful tool for a non-hierarchycal, quasi-anonymous and reasonably fast (in term of propagation) domain name system There's a good article here: http://cointelegraph.com/news/114050/change-is-coming-how-the-blockchain-will-transform-the-domain-name-business There's even a registrar for decentralized domain names: https://peername.com/ Not zillions of papers yet, but it's an area of intense academic research. Some are thinking of it usefulness for voting systems, something with extra complications (as you know, voting systems are extremely complicated from a theoretical standpoint-- and from a practical one too.) Regards, Enrique [1] Of course, I'm not meaning British Columbia :)