Reminiscent of The Economist's iconic twin articles from October last year titled "The Trust Machine" and "The great chain of being sure about things," this new article makes perfectly clear the benefits and disruptive properties of an immutable ledger system.

This time, however, the article is from the IMF itself. Andreas Adriano, the Senior Communications Officer in the IMF's Communications Department, and Hunter Monroe, a Senior Economist in the IMF's Monetary and Capital Markets Department, together wrote the four-page comprehensive report.

"With Bitcoin, everyone on the Internet can validate and record transactions in their own copy of the ledger." ... "Some predict that this capability to disintermediate any trusted third party will be the most disruptive technology since the Internet. "

- Adriano and Monroe