Historically, parties have relied on trusted third parties such as banks or governments to conduct business.  Blockchain technology embeds trust in the technology rather than a third party and is ushering in a new revolution in decentralized finance (DeFi). 

In this presentation, we will examine how cryptocurrency and smart contracts form the basis for the future of blockchain commerce. In this type of commerce, distributed applications (DApps) operate autonomously through the execution of smart contract programs running on blockchains such as Ethereum or Hyperledger Fabric.  Attention will be given to discussing the business value of these public and permissioned blockchains.  No investment advice will be given.

Frederick J. Riggins is a professor of Management Information Systems, Director of the Center for Enterprise Business Analytics, and Director of the Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program at the College of Business at North Dakota State University. He earned his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University where he was awarded the William W. Cooper Doctoral Dissertation Award in Management. He has served on the faculty at Arizona State University, the University of Minnesota, Georgia Tech, and the University of Alberta. In a global ranking of IS researcher productivity, he was ranked #9 on the list of top IS researchers for 2003-2007. He has 20 A or A* publications based on the Australian Business Deans Council journal rankings list and over 5,300 citations according to Google Scholar.