This article is part of our series “Blockchain beyond Bitcoin“. Bitcoin is the beginning, but it’s far from the end. To help you wrap your head around why, we’re taking a deep dive into the world of blockchain. In this series, we’ll go beyond cryptocurrency and hone in on blockchain applications that could reshape medical records, voting machines, video games, and more.
Late last year, on October 26th, a small U.K. tech company called On-Line PLC decided to change its name. From that day forward, it would be known as On-Line Blockchain PLC.
That seemingly insignificant move had a massive and almost instantaneous impact on the company. Within 24 hours, its share prices rose by 394 percent. Within 48 hours, its value had grown more than it had in all the past two years combined.
On-Line PLC didn’t change its business model, hire a new executive, or announce a new product. It just tacked “blockchain” to its name, and suddenly investors threw truckloads of money at it — a testament to the blockchain’s hype.
Not much has changed since then. Blockchain technology — the backbone of Bitcoin, and much more — is just as hyped as it’s ever been. You’ve probably heard about it on the news, read headlines about it online, and been lectured about it from that one guy in your office who’s super into cryptocurrencies. It’s like Beanie Babies and Dutch tulips at this point.
That might lead you to dismiss it as a fad, but don’t let the hype fool you. Blockchain has legitimate potential to change the world. As the Harvard Business Review puts it, “Blockchain is not a ‘disruptive’ technology, which can attack a traditional business model with a lower-cost solution and overtake incumbent firms quickly. Blockchain is a foundational technology. It has the potential to create new foundations for our economic and social systems.”
“It has the potential to create new foundations for our economic and social systems.”
Yet it’s still early days for the technology. Many have likened the recent blockchain boom to the dot-com bubble of the 1990s — which is a fair comparison. That bubble did burst, but after the crash, the world wide web eventually rose from the ashes of the 1990s and became one of the most transformative technologies the world has ever known. Blockchain, it seems, has that same potential — it’s just in its the dot-com phase right now.
Over the course of the next week, Digital Trends is taking a deep dive into the blockchain space. We’re going beyond Bitcoin and homing in on applications that might reshape democracy, economics, advertising, and more. Blockchain’s impact on these concepts could truly change how they function – but, of course, revolution is often messy business.
ASUS has started selling its UGen Intel Arc Pro B70 graphics card in Europe, bringing its take on Intel’s workstation GPU to customers with a hefty €1,799 recommended price. The card is available in Germany and Austria, while ASUS lists it at CHF 1,799 in Switzerland.
Intel first introduced the Arc Pro B70 in March 2026, with its own branded model starting at $949. ASUS’s version arrives several months later with the same core GPU architecture but a different cooling design and a higher power rating. The price also places it well above Intel’s original starting point, although the two prices are not directly comparable because ASUS’s European figure includes VAT.
Anthropic has officially filed to go public, and buried inside its S-1 is a blunt warning about the technology at the center of its business. The maker of Claude AI says advanced AI could cause everything from large-scale cyberattacks and geopolitical instability to catastrophic or even existential risks for humanity.
The warnings take up a surprisingly large part of the filing. Axios notes that more than 90 pages, or roughly a third of the prospectus, focus on risk factors. Many of them warn about what could happen as AI systems become more capable and autonomous.
AI giants have a growing autonomy problem on their hands. A new Axios report has revealed that Anthropic's Claude recently accessed publicly available Georgia vote count without human authorization, sparking fresh concerns about AI security ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.