Roman Beck is professor of Business Informatics at IT University of Copenhagen and the head of the European Blockchain Center. We talk to Roman about blockchain, a cryptographically secure, distributed database technology sometimes called a “trust machine.” Blockchain applications include the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, as well as various ideas for ensuring trust across institutional boundaries, such as contracts. It may also serve as the conceptual infrastructure of the next generation Internet. Which are the main ideas underlying this technology, how does it makes us think differently about digital information, and what are the possibilities, challenges, promises, and threats of this technology?