“There are two key features of blockchain that make it, potentially, a very useful technology from an economic perspective. First, the data about transactions are posted on many public sites thus giving these data an immutability that makes disputes easy to avoid. Second, although the data are in some sense public, they can be encrypted so that a particular party learns only those aspects that she needs to know.”

“I don't think it was inevitable until the point where the tanks started rolling-in. It was unstoppable at that point… But 20 years ago, would we have realised this was going to happen? My sense would be absolutely not. I say this as someone who participated in a really sincere effort to reach-out to Russia, to include Russia in the cooperative mechanisms that work for us.”

“I think behavioural economics has now become an accepted part of the thinking on markets- it's generally accepted that people's decision making is heavily influenced by emotional state and various other behavioural biases in comparison to previous models that assumed rational decision making in the markets. The markets and individual investors are driven by what you could call 'irrational considerations' and emotions play an important role in that.”