Blockchain

Blockchain: A Hype or a Hoax? fills a gap in the book market to provide material that is not only technical but also caters to business readers. This book was written to keep in mind various stakeholders and the current gap in blockchain education as well as use case implementation.

This book reviews blockchain technology, discusses why proof of concept fails, offers examples of use cases that have been successful and that have failed and articulates a framework that should be used before deciding whether blockchain is the right technology for transformation. It uses strategic models and frameworks to assist organisations to see a fit score for their specific use cases.

This book provides guidance on how to create a blockchain strategy and a business case to pitch for the budget. It also includes a case study to apply the knowledge on practical use cases for blockchain and a technical overview of most of the blockchain use cases in the market including crypto, non-fungible tokens, decentralised finance, and decentralised autonomous organisations, as well as financial and non-financial industry use cases.

This book also provides a detailed overview of most of the mainstream blockchain products currently available in the market. It also offers guidance on how readers can best educate themselves on blockchain technology that is available through commercial and free resources.

It concludes with a clear direction on selecting blockchain to solve real-life use cases that are best fit. A financial and non-financial value-adding framework is discussed throughout this book to assist business leaders, programme managers, product managers and information technology leaders to make strategic choices, and business cases and develop strategies for digital transformation through the use of blockchain.

The distinctive feature of this book is the critical analysis of blockchain from a technology and business perspective. This is the first book to focus on business, technology and blockchain selection framework. The most unique feature of this book would be to apply Michael Porter’s competitive advantage strategy theory on blockchain use cases and their impact on companies.

This book is aimed at technology students, technology professionals, blockchain and fintech consultant and business leaders. It will also be useful for readers who are building a business case to adopt blockchain into an organisation or are seeking to grow their knowledge of blockchain and improve their fintech strategy.

Kapil Sharma is a global technology transformation executive with more than 23 years of extensive management experience (C-Suite level) in large globally distributed investment banking and consulting environments, with a proven track record of initiating and delivering multiple global strategic initiatives.

Kapil has worked for tier 1 banks in London on technology strategy, complex technology transformation, innovation and education. Kapil is an experienced leader with a proven record of formulating technology strategy, service management, cost models, delivering strategic initiatives, globally complex technology and regulatory programmes, private and public cloud strategy/execution, blockchain, AIOps, product development, mentoring and team management.

Kapil has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster and Bournemouth University since 2001. His latest assignment with Bournemouth University included designing and teaching a postgraduate module called ‘Blockchain & Digital Futures’. Kapil is the author of four technology books published by Wiley (Wrox before). Kapil has an MBA degree from Bayes Business School, London (formerly Cass Business School) specialising in finance and strategy.

Kapil is also a founder of the IOSpeed Limited (https://iospeed.com) company in the United Kingdom. IOSpeed provides blockchain consulting and education to corporates.