Abstract :
The Internet has sparkled a number of innovations that have fundamentally changed many aspects of our lives. Among them, it has dis-intermediated markets, transforming them from physical to digital. Up to date though, the most common of the elements present in any commercial transaction has largely escaped Internet´s influence: money. Analysts have long predicted that this could not be forever and indeed it hasn´t. Over the past years, we have witnessed the rapid rise of co-called cryptocurrencies, fuelled by the blockchain innovation. In this lecture, after briefly revisiting the nature of money (perhaps the less well understood of the most widely used technologies), I will address the emerging concept of smart money and its various potential uses. Starting from Bitcoin (the protocol), I will attempt to sketch out a road to money-over-IP, consisting of intermediate innovation stops at bitcoin (the currency), app-specific money, smart contracts, and M2M money. In the process, I will explain how these emerging innovations will fundamentally affect the nature of the Internet itself, as well as the future of commerce and our world.
