Berkeley blockchain

University of California, Berkeley School of Law this spring will offer an interdisciplinary course, “Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, and the Future of Technology, Business and Law,” that will explore some of the potential uses and concerns around blockchain technology. The course will take on 20 students each from the law school, business school and undergraduate engineering department, and will culminate in a project where teams of six students drawn from each field collaborate on different potential blockchain applications.

The course is the brainchild of Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy executive director Adam Sterling and business professor Gregory LeBlanc. The two designed the course to cut across legal, business and engineering education to give students a sense of the way blockchain is handled in professional settings. As Sterling explained, “That's what we see in the real world.”

While blockchain can at times be a difficult to understand technology concept, law students seem to understand its potential. “I've been here running the center for three years; this is far and away the most popular course. We had over 70 students apply for 20 spots,” Sterling said. Trying to meet the needs of the 50 students who couldn't get into the course is next on the docket. “I'm scrambling to create more content.”

To Sterling's mind, lawyers are faced with parsing out some important legal questions surrounding blockchain while trying to keep up with the rate of innovation. Especially as many companies begin considering initial coin offerings (ICOs), a cryptocurrency-based crowdfunding gaining traction among entrepreneurs as a means to fund new ventures, corporate attorneys are likely to see blockchain become more, not less, important to their work.

“Folks are scrambling to figure this out, meanwhile companies are raising tens of millions of dollars in token,” he said.

Although the financial technology industry has laid some claim to blockchain, especially around the development and use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Sterling said that blockchain's potential to “disrupt” is likely to extend well outside of the financial industry.

“There are really interesting implications in contracting, for building supply chains on the blockchain. These kinds of complex corporate transactions that require middle men and third party verification, that's where I think a lot of the more interesting long-term applications are,” Sterling noted.

Sterling thinks that the course is likely to spur on further educational opportunities around blockchain and other emerging technologies. “I think it represents the direction we're going in a lot of our curriculum,” Sterling said of the spring course. Its interdisciplinary structure may also be a sign of future educational opportunities in this space, as in his view, “it's rare that you can bring them all together.”

UC Berkeley additionally launched a professional development pilot program, “Blockchain Unlocked,” comprised of workshops and speakers to help professionals understand blockchain's industrial applications.