Ask the average person on the street what “blockchain” is, and you probably will get responses ranging from, “Block who?” to “Something to do with Bitcoin.”

At the end of 2017, speculators had run the value of a single Bitcoin to over $18,000—a far cry from the pennies that Bitcoins were trading for just a few years ago. But then the Bitcoin price fell back, almost as fast as it had risen, and at this writing has been trading in the $5,000–$10,000 range for several months. The buzz about cryptocurrencies in general and Bitcoin in particular has faded in tandem with Bitcoin’s trading price.