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Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson and Jason Potts are with the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub in Melbourne, Australia. In this opinion piece, the authors discuss why blockchain may be more disruptive than the so-called 'general purpose technologies' that transformed society in recent centuries.  While cryptoeconomics is already a vibrant research field, the study of the blockchain must not be left solely to computer scientists and game theorists. The rollout of blockchain technology raises complex questions in economics, public policy, law, sociology and political economy. What we call "institutional cryptoeconomics" starts from a simple premise – the blockchain is not just a new general purpose technology, it is a new institutional technology. This may sound like a pedantic distinction, but the difference between these two conceptions is profound. General purpose technologies allow us to do what we already do better, faster and cheaper. Economists und

Developers at some of the top tech companies have created a browser API that could soon make it easier to buy goods and services online with cryptocurrency. The work, started by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with the help of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple and Mozilla, is a tangible step forward for a currency-agnostic web payment standard  first conceived in 2013. Equally, as bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies gain more momentum, the launch signifies the growing recognition of cryptocurrency as a payments technology. ADVERTISEMENT Indeed, the W3C has gotten more interested in blockchain technologies over the years, hosting its first ever blockchain workshop in June last year. But while participants were left with interest in standardizing and democratizing the technology's use, no formal work was decided upon then. That, however, has changed. Announced on Thursday, the API is currently  being implemented in browsers including Google's Chrome, M