Welcome back to the Trace podcast, Bribes, Swindle, or Steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge, and today we're talking about blockchain.

Blockchain technology is on the brink of mass adoption,

but we don't fully understand the regulatory hurdles involved.

To help us think through the benefits and challenges associated with blockchain is

Kerry Cohen.

Carrie was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, where she tried

public corruption and investment fraud cases.

She's now a partner in Morrison and Forrester's New York office where she

handles high-stakes litigation with a focus on white-collar cases. Carrie, thank you for joining me.

Wonderful to be with you. As we're going to cover blockchain today, and many of our listeners

may not be really familiar with it, maybe you could start with an overview and provide some context for us.

There's a great quote about blockchain that I think is helpful. Albet somewhat scary,

which is a quote from a very senior person at Goldman Sachs. From Silicon Valley to Wall Street,

technologists and investors alike are buzzing about the potential for the

blockchain to revolutionize, well, just about everything. I think that sums up fairly well,

sort of the future of blockchain. I looked at some key data points to sort of give you some

stats, which might be helpful to set the table.

And these stats are from the World Economic Forum report.

More than $1.4 billion across 549 deals since 2013.

So blockchain has been involved in $1.4 billion worth of deals deals, and there were 549 deals since 2013.

Virtually every major bank in the United States and in Europe is exploring the adoption of blockchain. There have been more than 2,500 blockchain patents filed with the U.S.

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