The digitisation of ownership

People have different opinions about the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, but the technological revolution that it spawned is fundamentally changing the worlds of society and business. In some blockchain-related matters, Switzerland is further ahead than California.

Remember Napster? Founded in 1999, the exchange platform for files, especially music, set the world ablaze. It allowed users to share audio files with each other, thereby undermining the copyright placed on them. Nobody talks about Napster anymore, but the concept of playing music from the Internet has virtually supplanted traditional record sales. Nowadays, services like Spotify or Apple Music dominate the market. They are perfectly legal and reliably deliver royalties to artists, record labels and copyright-holders. Digital distribution models have even got sales back on track: according to initial forecasts, the market grew by 8.2 percent in 2018.

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