Media theorist. Author. Adjunct Professor. Hammond B3 player. Co-founder of the @BlockchainRI.
Toronto
Joined March 2008
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Today, @alextapscott and I are officially releasing our new @blockchainRI report: "Rebuilding Canada for the New Technology Order: A National Moonshot for a Prosperous and Sovereign Canada."
We are living through a hinge point in history, driven by a new world order and a once-in-a-species technological transformation. For the first time in history, human cognitive labour, including creativity, reasoning, and judgment, is becoming abundant, programmable, and capable of independent action. That changes everything: how value is created, how nations compete, how citizens live.
Canada now faces a defining choice. We can lead this transition or be led by it. This report is a call for a "national moonshot" to secure Canada's digital sovereignty and long-term prosperity.
Read the full report here: blockchainresearchinstitute.…
Good insight, but I thought such was restricted to older people like me. Haha
Struck by how similar this anti-tokenization ad is to the anti-piracy ads of the 80s and 90s in their extreme imagery and fear-mongering language.
Makes sense, though.
Back then, the internet of information was democratizing access to information. Legacy IP owners and gatekeepers felt threatened.
Today, the internet of value is democratizing access to assets and ownership, and many incumbents feel the same way.
When you have a new paradigm like this, vested interests fight change and react with hostility, threats and legal challenges.
In the 90s, record labels were threatening kids with jail time just for burning a CD or using Limewire.
Today, Wall Street lobby groups are portraying tokenization as a biological WMD, complete with exploding poison and radioactive signs.
Are there challenges to implementing tokenization, and should it be regulated? Of course.
But public company CEOs should also recognize the glaring opportunity: tokenization can open their stock to new investors, just as the internet opened creators and artists to new audiences.
This is a crying shame. In the new AI economy and society, we need liberal arts more than ever. Universities shouldn’t teach skills as that will all be done by AI. Thank you to teach fundamental capabilities like critical thinking, problem-solving, research, seeing the big picture, having bullshit detectors, knowing how to work with a personal agent, having good values and being good citizens. If everyone in America had studied 20th century European history. I don’t think we’d be having many of the problems we did today. The humanities, philosophy, social sciences, anthropology, these are all critical. And the advice many people gave the young people a decade ago to study “useful” topics like computer program programming has not held up well.
In just 15 years, Liberal Arts has gone from the most popular to the least popular university major in Canada.
University enrolment is a lagging indicator.
For years, young people were told to “learn to code.” So it's not surprising CompSci and engineering enrolments surged.
Now AI is automating much of what those students were preparing to do.
As AI steamrolls knowledge work, I think the best way for young people to navigate whatever comes next is to learn how to think critically, defend an argument, and understand context.
That means knowing something about history, philosophy, and political economy among other things.
I also think knowing about art, culture, history etc, make you more interesting, and a 'good hang' may be the hardest thing for AI to automate away.
That's not to say STEM graduates can't do all of the above.
But a Liberal Arts education provides a basic intellectual toolkit that can be repurposed as things change.
I'll bet we've reached peak STEM and the pendulum is about to swing back to the humanities.
Curious what others think.
Data c/o the @globeandmail
National sovereignty in the age of AI means more than having data centres within your borders. It means having the ability to control the technology your economy and society depend on, and ensuring that the most powerful AI systems remain under human control.
In my latest article, I explore how middle powers like Canada can work together to build technological sovereignty and establish global rules for governing AI.
Read the full article here: dontapscott.substack.com/p/m…
Don Tapscott retweeted
New @defidecodedpod is out!
I sit down with @gregosuri of @akashnet to discuss why decentralized compute networks could power the next wave of AI.
Infrastructure bottlenecks, data centre backlash, and power shortages means we must tap into GPU capacity wherever it exists—even in our own homes.
Always a blast chatting with Greg.
Check it out!
Episode 252: How Decentralized Compute Markets Solve AI Bottlenecks with Greg Osuri of Akash Network
@alextapscott @gregosuri @akashnet @CMCC_Global
0:00 Introduction
3:37 The state of compute: the biggest build-out in human history
4:27 Is AI demand slowing? Reading one lab’s soft quarter
8:27 Humans prompt once a minute, agents a thousand times
10:36 Will people pay for AI? Newspapers vs. the internet
15:14 “We let go any engineer that doesn’t use AI”
19:14 The subsidized party: a $200 plan worth $8,000 of compute
21:37 CoreWeave’s jitters and the leverage problem
23:25 Energy, permits, and the pushback stalling data centers
28:19 Training vs. inference, and the gigawatt problem
32:55 Why inference can run anywhere: Macs, offices, homes
36:37 Akash Home Node: putting your gaming PC to work
39:04 Akash today: nearly a trillion tokens a month
41:26 Making compute contracts tradable
47:00 Where to find Greg, and why homes are the future of AI
I'm excited to do the opening keynote for the World Digital Assets Forum @BeOn_D_ on November 9, 2026 in Seoul, Korea, hosted by @TheKoreaHerald. wdaf.heraldcorp.com/2026/en/
In our latest @BlockchainRI research, @DHeintzman and I explore how quantum computing threatens the whole blockchain stack, from signatures and consensus to smart contracts and privacy protocols.
The threat is uneven. A Bitcoin holder, a stablecoin issuer, a central bank, and an enterprise operator each face a different risk, but for all of them the cost of starting now is bounded and the cost of being unprepared is not.
Read the full report here: blockchainresearchinstitute.…
NEW @BlockchainRI whitepaper: "Quantum Risk and the Blockchain Stack" by @DHeintzman and @dtapscott explores the threat to signatures, consensus, and smart contracts, and why “harvest now, exploit later” makes this urgent. Read the full report here: blockchainresearchinstitute.…
Unbelievable!!!!!
JP Morgan will make $107 BILLION on net interest income (NII) next year.
NII, simply put, is the difference between what the bank pays for deposits and what it earns on its loans.
Rates are rising. Your savings rate isn’t.
That’s why banks fought to ban stablecoin yield in GENIUS and even modest rewards in CLARITY.
They’re protecting the spread, not you.
Identic agents need an owner, and it shouldn't be the big platforms. It should be the individual. That means you.
I joined Andrea Petrone on The World Class Leaders Show to talk about what identic AI really is and what it means for the people leading organizations.
Watch here: youtu.be/5loS8VA_OjQ
Don Tapscott retweeted
The CLARITY Act failed—but crypto got some clarity anyway.
The SEC and CFTC stepped in where Congress did not.
Will rulemaking be enough to unlock the next wave of crypto adoption—or will the momentum prove fleeting?
My take for @CoinDesk in this week’s Crypto for Advisors 👇
Don Tapscott retweeted
This is a great read.
My dad, @dtapscott, has been thinking deeply about the best way to steward and govern emerging technologies for decades.
His thoughts on the future of AI 👇
As AI systems become more autonomous and powerful, we need to move beyond “pacing the frontier” and build the rules, institutions and accountability needed to govern them.
In my latest article for the @financialpost, I outline seven foundations for governing AI before it governs us.
Read the full article here: financialpost.com/technology…
As AI systems become more autonomous and powerful, we need to move beyond “pacing the frontier” and build the rules, institutions and accountability needed to govern them.
In my latest article for the @financialpost, I outline seven foundations for governing AI before it governs us.
Read the full article here: financialpost.com/technology…
Don Tapscott retweeted
New @defidecodedpod is out!
I sit down with past guest and industry leader @luigidemeo who is now heading up BD at @aave
His ambition is to build the infrastructure for global credit markets.
Can Aave eat Wall Street, and remake finance for the better?
Find out! 👇
Episode 250: Will Aave Eat Wall Street? with Luigi D'Onorio DeMeo of Aave Labs
@alextapscott @luigidemeo @aave @CMCC_Global
0:00 Introduction
3:48 Leaving Avalanche and landing at Aave
7:17 From ETHLend to the largest lending protocol in crypto
11:16 $80B in deposits, no back office
12:12 How overcollateralized lending works and why people borrow
15:49 Why Celsius and BlockFi blew up and Aave didn't
18:46 What's being built on top of Aave
21:12 Life after CLARITY, and the cost of uncertainty
23:55 Does uncertainty advantage the risk-tolerant?
26:20 Why stablecoins cut at the heart of the bank model
29:29 Deposit insurance as a taxpayer subsidy
31:22 Fintech as digital wallpaper and why that's ending
33:34 Moving loans off balance sheets and onto Aave
37:23 The DTCC and the next killer app
Don Tapscott retweeted
Every 20-odd years, the boundary between humans and technology gets redrawn.
The first era of the internet was PC-based: static, read-only content.
The second was smartphone-based: rich media and user-generated content.
Now, roughly 20 years after the iPhone, the internet is entering a new era.
In my book, Web3, I argued that this next era would be defined by the convergence of three technologies:
1. Blockchain and digital assets
2. AI
3. Wearables, including VR and AR
Wearables—and VR in particular—have always felt like the technology of the future. And perhaps always would be.
But this $META announcement feels like a watershed.
All three technologies have now reached their tipping point.
The next era of the internet has begun.
What if we are creating an artificial intelligence with powers once belonging only to the gods, living not in the heavens, but in corporate data centers?
Recent experiments have shown AI agents escaping contained environments, communicating through unauthorized channels, and finding ways around constraints their creators never intended them to bypass.
In my latest article, I explore how we can govern increasingly autonomous AI before it begins to govern us. We need neither a global freeze nor blind faith in corporate self-regulation. We need a new governance architecture that keeps humanity (not machines or tech executives) in control.
Read the full article here: dontapscott.substack.com/p/w…
Toronto is hosting the first-ever Canada Investment Summit. @alextapscott and I wrote a major report on how Canada can implement a clear, values-driven national mission to redesign the economy's architecture for a world in which intelligence, data, and networks are our primary sources of value.
Check it out here: blockchainresearchinstitute.…
The world’s biggest investors are descending on Toronto for the first-ever Canada Investment Summit.
They’ll be pitched shovel-ready projects in oil and gas, mining, power generation, infrastructure and more.
I hope we see some major deals announced.
But I also hope our guests learn that Canadians are not only “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
We are also some of the world’s boldest innovators in AI, next-gen compute, space, blockchain and more.
Invest in Canada, yes! Help us build the physical infrastructure to become a global energy and industrial powerhouse.
But also help us build the digital infrastructure needed for Canada—and the world—to thrive in this new technology order.
Our startups are shovel-ready.
Venture capital is shovel-ready.
Builders are shovel-ready.
I will be at the Canadian Global Growth Forum today, hosted by @cvca making this case to global investors
If you want to invest in Canada while pushing the frontier forward, consider Canada’s builder community.
CC: @EvanLSolomon @FP_Champagne @buildcanada @lucyhargreaves4 @Ben_Bergen @cvca
We used to outsource memory. Now we're beginning to outsource thought itself.
I said this in a recent conversation about my new book, You to the Power of Two, co-authored with Joseph Bradley:
"During the period of the internet, we outsourced storage of information to the web. You didn't have to remember the name of that street because you could look it up on GPS or that date. Well now we're not just outsourcing storage, we're outsourcing thinking. Am I going to think about this or am I going to let my agent think about it?"
That question sits underneath everything else the book argues about identic AI: personal agents built to reflect our own judgment and values. The convenience is obvious. The harder question is what happens to our own capacity to think if we hand too much of it away.
Get the book here: amazon.com/You-Power-Two-Red…
I popped by #TheAIExchange pod to have an important discussion with Ashish Upadhyay on Identic AI and some of the concepts found in my new book.
Link below for the full episode.
youtube.com/watch?v=V38g8A02…
Don Tapscott retweeted
Data centres can and should be an unambiguous net positive for communities across the country.
Setting common standards with buy in from Canadians and industry leaders should lead to more development - not less.
This is great news.
Now let's build!
