Bettina Warburg's excellent TED Talk explaining blockchain and cryptocurrencies

Blockchains give us the technological capability of creating a record of human exchange, exchange of currency, all kinds of digital and physical assets, and even of our own personal attributes, in a totally new way. So in some ways they become a technological institution that has a lot of the benefits of the traditional institutions we're used to using in society, but it does this in a decentralized way. It does this by converting a lot of our uncertainties into certainties.

‍

“Now that's a pretty bold statement, but if you take nothing else away from this talk, I actually want you to remember that while blockchain technology is relatively new, it's also a continuation of a very human story, and the story is this: As humans, we find ways to lower uncertainty about one another so that we can exchange value.”

‍