The Consumers' Research organisation, which conducts consumer product testing in the United States since 1929, has presented a white paper on bitcoin and blockchain potential. 

The report was released during the North American bitcoin conference held in Miami on 21-22 January 2016. The aim of the white paper is to analyse opportunities that blockchain creates, challenges it raises, and ways to tackle them. In order to provide an exhaustive up-to-date analysis, the authors divided all potential uses of blockchain into three categories, according to the sphere of technology application: blockchain 1.0 (currency and payments), blockchain 2.0 (smart contracts, programmable assets, decentralised autonomous entities, proof of “X”) and blockchain 3.0 (non-economic applications). Blockchain-provided key opportunities are singled out within each of the groups and further described in the context of main actors involved, status, goals, threats, likelihood of threats’ occurrence as of 2015, and recommendations.

According to Forbes, Consumers’ Research plans to enhance the report with the help of bitcoin community. To this end the document will be reportedly placed in Google Docs or Rap Genius. For the moment, the full text is available on the website of the Consumers’ Research.

As Joe Colangelo, the company’s executive director, explains, the white paper aims at providing more understanding of the concept of blockchain from the part of state regulators and industry players, and at clarifying all possible misunderstandings that could arise.

Anna Lavinskaya