it was two thousand and eight and the banks were hemorrhaging billions of dollars the eurozone was on the ropes and people could only watch in horror. and then at the height of the financial crisis an outsider launched a new internet based currency discount that children who are born today won't ever know what a bank looks like from the inside out. the most important currency of all is trust. and the banks have gambled it away. the punky induced the banking industry has been rocked by one scandal after another in recent years. but this failure gave impetus to the emergence of new web based technologies such as the block chain. and cable for about these occurrences that could have the middleman and banks where there are no banking monopolies and were above all the state no longer has the sole prog of in the creation of money

for form. thus it's about more than just catch. up trying to change technology or completely revolutionize large parts of the many many industries was a time when the senior. staff and the executive floors of banks skyscrapers the block chain revolution has long since begun for example in berlin crisis back where restaurant owner a young plats has been pursuing his vision of a world without banks for more than twenty years. he is fighting for an alternative monetary system his weapon is bitcoin the magic and if you want to imagine a superhero currency and say hell with the money work that superman and batman might use you start fantasizing and you come up with something like that coil good

among hundreds of us push five hundred of course. bitcoin the money with alleged super powers is used here regularly the smartphone replaces the wallet. as we have it from well i already have better point on my phone in the form of it's you now i have almost a whole bet calling on it and i click on send. it's already there it's already there that the banks play absolutely no role zero in this transaction i just made a bank for repayment. until now money transfers have usually involved several banks that costs both time and money because it doesn't need a bank in the mall it's done directly through blocked chain technology and is encrypted that could even make sense for bank superfluities. blocks a network regulates itself because all transactions are stored on numerous computers. scammers have no chance at all saying

that court support is. jerk plats the fifty year old restauranteur lost all trust in the financial system long ago he's disillusioned with the global finance structure. i believe that our economic and financial system is facing very serious problems and these are getting increasingly extreme. and also increasingly damaging to our society. they are widening the gap between rich and poor. and we've also created a system we have a class of bankers who answer to nobody. uses like chats are calling for change they say the people not the financial world should control the money this is with this currency nobody needs middlemen nobody needs banks nobody needs permission to use it you don't have to show an id card get

a credit reference or fill out an application you just download a program or enough and then you can use a bit coin quite easily. the billionaire was the first restaurant owner in the world to accept bitcoin as a means of payment he's convinced digital currencies are already competing against the old ones. young men in economic and financial policies. governments and the banks are driving people to bitcoin that core and the world is that simple the financial crisis doesn't seem to be really over so confidence in the euro is twinned ling was confidence and it kind is rising and you can see that clearly from the exchange rate as well because all. austria is in the grip of cryptocurrency fever. based at a prime location in downtown vienna magdalena a scant exchanges hard cash for virtual money. her clients are anything but

confusion and. since your lot isn't teeny there are young people at teenagers who see it more as a lifestyle product and think bitcoin is cool i know that we have twenty to forty year old spa people who see it as an investment but also elderly people i had an eighteen year old who also wanted to trade the coins i explained to him how you trade in crypto currency he got it and was super happy. for it the big cash machine is a customer magnet it's well as you're a nurse and spits out digital coins into a smartphone based online wallets within seconds. the german business woman had good reason to choose vienna for her operation. and you get her last year sees it as a digital commodity and treats it like software that means you don't need a license from the financial markets supervisory bodies in contrast to germany where you need a financial intermediary license to trade in bitcoin. the austrian press has dubbed

her the bitcoin queen. mucked elina thousands of euros worth of bitcoin every day. demand is strong. of course people are interested in the returns they can get a lot of them want to get rich. it's no wonder bitcoins crazy price history is like something out of a hollywood movie. erik film an an american teenager made headlines around the world after the one thousand dollars he invested in bitcoin when he was only twelve made him a millionaire just before his eighteenth birthday. but they have recently been some sharp falls east and advises her clients she has a very simple long term strategy. if at all you are i'd rather place

my trust in mathematics cryptography and technology than any third parties our banks. luck trying to knology is a decentralized database a sort of register sums of money shares and contracts are recorded quickly she and without intermediaries such as banks. entries cannot be changed. a number of blocks of digital information form a data chain this is the so-called block chain and it is totally secure. copies are stored on thousands of computers and any attempt to manipulate them would quickly attract attention. bitcoin is the best known block train application. in japan it has already been accepted as an official means of payment china and russia are skeptical. but many uses are smitten. for

some i think the whole thing is revolutionary somehow well i don't want to say that it challenges the state or banks or whatever but if you look at the whole economic system you can see the problems that crop up time and time again. and then suddenly because it comes up with this idea compresses because you read it through when you go into it a bit deeper and you start to look at blace and the whole technology behind it and then you increasingly realize that this is an idea that can really work because it can really pay off really function. as a start it's going very well we should be in the black by the end of the year and our goal now is to have thirty stores in three years with the next one's opening in london and stockholm later this year stockholm and that is south. the enters postal service now even sells bitcoin vouches proof that the block chain revolution is even reaching traditional companies. but there is also a dark side particularly in its early days that coin was seen as gangster money because

the anonymity of the transactions meant it could be used to launder cash and buy and sell weapons and drugs. and power clan check have to cleared war on criminal activity they found at their internet start up but panda about two years ago in vienna. today it's grown into europe's largest crypto currency exchange. customers can change heroes and dollars to buy because and other cryptocurrency. as of yet so we have in the region of a million in sales today both buying and selling the positives and withdrawals are even higher so that of course. comes on top but pure sales are worth just over one million euros a day. while many critics changes operating

grey areas or prohibited the german austrian team is setting the highest standards they want everything to be as secure as a bag. we have and i'm finding is that this year we said from the outset that we were serious about the. transfers from euro's to bitcoin in vice versa must not be anonymised and we must have verification for each customer. this is exactly the same sort of verification that you have in europe today when you open a bank account online. customers can pay via credit card or online banking. but even getting that fine has been a struggle. the banks gave us zero support they avoided us like the play it took

a dislike of us or. now it's the other way around but. now they come to us and say hey why don't we do a project together so now we have the choice i never thought back then that things would turn around so fast that. investors around the world up pumping billions into and as yet still unregulated markets. so is this superhero money a better method of payment compared to the euro or the old. germany central bank the bundesbank doesn't think so the guardians of the official currency have been watching their internet rivals closely. the bank's management can't understand the hype around crypto currencies i was a bit of on them because we were warned against it and point especially with regard to the speculative aspects of one bitcoin is worth anything from two hundred to two thousand euros so anything seems possible because lots will inspect elating and it

may pay off but it can also go wrong so we would definitely advise against investing in. the problem the currency guardians have is obvious for decades they had sole control over bank notes and coins but they can't control blocked chains. isn't it love conduct we're doing this is a race the controllers cannot win doctrine this point in block chains offer a whole new level of evasion and that because it's global because it's international. has no hope. land it's beyond any regulatory reach into cliff. in order to understand the opportunities and risks the federal bank has are working with the german stock exchange to create their own block chain. that's my willing to admit that we may have already gone as far as we can with conventional technology in other words in the conventional monetary system or at

least getting close to it whereas with big coins or block chain technology the limits aren't yet clear. because. and what about the banks have they underestimated the danger and fail to recognize the threats block taint acknowledge she poses to their business models why does one need a bank at all when one can transfer money without one the banks are now belatedly trying to get in on the act because it's not we're looking at all these topics not because we want to defend ourselves against them but because we see opportunities to generate really new business models and new solutions for our customers. the potential of the blocked chain in the banking world is huge. it could make expensive financial supervisory bodies obsolete. if the banks were to cut out the middlemen they could save billions but the technology is still in its infancy.

blocked chain. chain as such can't yet provide the capacity for the rapid transfer of the millions of payments made every day. to transfer. this is tim is however already making some aspects of banking easier and faster. chain is a lot more than just a bad point spread coin is a crypto currency it's very well known and right now it's very popular blog chains can also be used in many many other areas and the banks can use them in their lending business or in their trade finance business our big banks around the world are researching block chain technology because they want to keep up with its development they have meticulously interested in block chains way they have sole access and can call the shots nobody has been on a committee i believe that we'll see commercial solutions that will involve total anonymity just like the botching and we'll also see the sort of regulatory

framework that will really allow us to use these things commercially and securely since the current. some of those working on this world of tomorrow can be found in berlin's backyards young program is from all over the world. thirty one year old kid stuff yet knows all about the new technologies and advises corporate bosses on their development and applications. the block chain revolution is like a steam roller and every day brings new projects and new worries. is fun it's incredibly exciting but it's also nerve racking watching the account balances go up and down or being responsible for the security of a system with billions it's really scary. for floyd. the block chain jaensch and others are working on goes way beyond bitcoin. it will not only revolutionize money transfer but contracts of all kinds. it will allow complete

strangers to deal with each other directly and for all we rely on mathematics and cryptography as long as the system runs this program and we know exactly what will happen if you enter into a contract that specifies an amount of time and conditions then you can be certain of the outcome eliminates the need for trust. trust in the code a revolutionary idea but again she wants to take things even further. and we want to give things their own bank accounts for example i can go to a bank today and open an account as a private person or as a company but my car can't open one my charging station can't get one either knocking my locks we're connecting things through the block chain so that they can accept or make payments and enter into complex contracts. that they know what's to my is going to visit

a test customer on behalf of the big energy provider. her star share in charge is trying to solve the most pressing problem facing electability germany has too few charging stations stand starts at least as. sharon charges a way of allowing electric car drivers and charging station operators to make ad hoc virtual transactions. and they can do this without entering into a contract or even knowing each other before hand. that works through the block chain about a block and. there are an estimated forty five thousand private charging stations in germany. in the future they only should be able to provide energy to customers via an app directly without any credit card all service charges vehicles will be able to charge and pay autonomous levi preprogrammed contracts machines paying machines in other words.

vehicles will communicate with their surroundings without any human agency. their digital world its will pay sensors to keep parking spaces free. block trains will even allow them to top up their batteries and pay for the charge by induction loops at traffic lights. these may all be very small transactions. but without luck train technology they couldn't happen little. bag i'll fen that's why i believe this will become more and more important in the future even though there is still a great deal we don't know simply because we don't yet have the experience and. the reason companies can trust machines to make autonomous transactions is down to the high level of data security in the block chain. doesn't stand

a chance against the computing power of the networks. business sectors where fraud and mistrust are rife have great hopes will block tainted knowledge. the diamond industry for example loses billions every year because of counterfeiting and blood diamonds. certificates of authenticity are usually only available on paper and can easily be faked the solution is to deposit an immutable fingerprint for each diamond in a block chain creating a digital citic it listing the unique identifying features for each stone. meanwhile american i teach and i.b.m. is planning to introduce block train technology into supermarkets with the aim of increasing food safety. block trains will be able to show the origin of meat for example. for what temperatures it has been stored as. some six hundred million people worldwide fall ill every year after consuming

contaminated food. the data chain can monitor steak and schnitzel supply chains at every step from the slaughterhouse to the refrigerated counter all you need is a smartphone. in the bavarian capital munich the united nations world food program wants to revolutionize the fight against hunger. ban hardcovers and his international team are already organizing donations and deliveries digitally. one particularly promising project is aimed at solving a huge problem that many refugees face. millions have lost their families money and homes as they flee war and persecution. in places like the us wreck refugee camp in the jordanian desert they're provided with the bare essentials for life. the aid organizations task is

difficult and takes enormous effort blocked ain't acknowledging it seems to offer a solution. to your hot off the block to egypt the ref you. g.'s has a virtual account in the block chamber instead of having this account with a bank we can use the block chain to handle individual transactions or advantage for us is clear and instead of making ten thousand individual transactions each month via banks for example we can simply settle up with various businesses once a week. going up to. the syrian refugees pay for their purchases by ice can. compare it with three stored biometric data and also magically triggers the transaction. if was looking at this program through a we're now trying to roll out the program for up to one hundred thousand people in jordan by the end of the year and that's whilst also starting in other countries we

believe we can save several million euros a year in bank charges in jordan alone which we can then use to buy more food. it's a new concept digital identities for people who have lost everything. the capability of the black chain is you could record a lot of different type of information on the black chain so for example like a lot of refugees just place they lose their papers they basically have to start from square one they don't have education records etc if you begin putting those things on the block then it becomes an immutable record that's also transferred across borders. anyone with access to radio or the internet has access to blocked chains. over in switzerland in the tranquil town of took south of zero time seems to have stood

still. but in fact the digital future has already arrived here. document has been the town's mayor for ten years has brought the block chain revolution into local government. using baseline appeal and used a bit of a pioneer tell things have always worked well when we're transparent so we really have to do this of course you can argue but the sort of thing until the cows come home there are hundred arguments in favor one hundred against and you end up doing nothing but that's what it takes in switzerland and probably elsewhere especially with new technologies just try it out get i want it. to work has now become the first local authority in the world to accept crypto currency. it's actually saw this is how it works you can go to a residence registration office register or d.

register yourself purchase a few weather services and pay by bitcoin it works wonderfully from mobile to mobile or as they say today from peer to peer. it's very fast and the transactions are secure so we aren't squandering any taxpayers' money to also be a floating donnish store you go. where. this official pilot scheme has had a signal effect and transform the alpine town into a block chain valley. what's it is now hotspots on the global block tain seen miller wants to take things even further to ensure the thirty thousand inhabitant community keeps up with the digital ais ation avalanche. it is now we have a new project also a beautiful world first digital by density. there are various different methods will be using the block and. this would mean personal data would no longer

be stored on central government service in the future every citizen would manage his own digital id card safe from prying and manipulation of the moment that he had to go through all that means nobody has control and can demand fees or the worst case scenario establish a monopoly and then exploited negatively sort of whole thing is a bit anoxic but in a good way it gives people more opportunities to decide things for themselves it was there so it was the. block chain technology is moving from digital anarky into the real world. it has already arrived in boardrooms and banks and now it's well on the way to revolutionizing our every day nice.

a typical a mission into the visual world of the great and. one in twenty. this multimedia exhibition in paris brings the awesomest masterpieces to life. and symphony of light color and sound. the moment next on w.

likes it thirty years after the fall of. everything seems possible here. not seen as where the peaceful revolution began. today it's a creative and driving the truck missed. those just the right time for a cure into the city's past and present. and thirty nine spoke to. africa. paul kagame a president to hamas and the end of the london patriotic front to include the rebel army and in the one nine hundred ninety four genocide. wasn't the wind blow in the

rooms there wasn't doing to us to be you going to allow me to reinforce them close and i knew this but it doesn't have been he was not putting in no troops. a controversial leader whose success is beyond question. time. london tragedy starts people for long t.w. . magic or amazing make up. the hours of optical illusion is just one of the exciting topics we have on the show today hello and welcome to.