“From my perspective, the experience barely differs from the usual routines of online life. But on a technical level, something miraculous is happening — something that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago. I’ve managed to complete a secure transaction without any of the traditional institutions that we rely on to establish trust. No intermediary brokered the deal; no social-media network captured the data from my transaction to better target its advertising; no credit bureau tracked the activity to build a portrait of my financial trustworthiness.” In the NYT Mag, the excellent Steven Johnson does a great job of explaining Bitcoin, and then provides a broader explanation of the bigger part of the story: the blockchain. The Bitcoin bubble may ultimately turn out to be a distraction from the true significance of the blockchain.