The clouds of misconception and skepticism around bitcoin were so dark in the initial years that it hid the genius behind it. In trying to understand bitcoin, it brought into the spotlight the technology that underpins it - the blockchain.
During the World Economic Forum at Davos, Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund spoke about virtual currencies and released a paper titled “Virtual Currencies and Beyond: Initial Considerations.” The paper examines virtual currencies as well as blockchain. It reads, “VC schemes and distributed ledger technologies can strengthen financial efficiency by facilitating peer-to-peer exchange while reducing transaction times and costs, especially across borders...Beyond payments systems, distributed ledger technologies have implications for a wide range of markets and financial market infrastructures as a fast, accurate and secure record keeping system, including for stock exchanges, central securities depositories, securities settlement systems or trade repositories.”
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/how-the-blockchain-is-being-used-beyond-bitcoin-and-finance-cm571563
