Bonus: Merits of Blockchain in the Enterprise

Bonus: Express Scripts COO Neal Sample and Mastercard President of Operations and Technology Ed McLaughlin debate the usefulness of blockchain. Neal believes that there is no use case for which blockchain is an optimal solution. He argues that for whatever problem an enterprise is trying to solve, there is already a better technology out there, and it has likely been out for decades. Neal claims that executives often look to blockchain because of the hype, which he claims is the wrong reason to look at it. Ed agrees that the enthusiasm runs amok when people are simply using it to get funded or just to use it. However, Ed considers himself a highly skeptical and jaded enthusiast, and he argues that blockchain can be useful, especially when dealing with trust across enterprise boundaries. As the enterprise lines become less fluid, Ed cites that the ability to have something to immediately give to regulators as a validation of what has occurred is an interesting concept.