Another blockchain event is happening in Sydney on Wednesday. Westpac Banking Corp is holding a "blockchain design challenge" at Stone & Chalk, where developers will hear from senior technology executives, bankers and lawyers about the potential for the technology.

Internal development of blockchains is also under way in many of the world's largest investment banks. For example, UBS has been doing mock trades through a blockchain it has built in the Level39 incubator in London, and Goldman Sachs last week filed a patent for a settlement system for stocks and bonds using blockchain technology.

However, for banks to deploy the technology with real customers, regulatory approval will be required. That's one of the the key purposes of the Sydney Blockchain Workshops this week: as with the development of cloud computing, banks are seeking to educate regulators from the ground up, in the hope that they see the potential of the systems and become comfortable enough to give them their support, despite the association with bitcoin.

At the CBA conference on Friday afternoon, Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard Law School professor and founder of Creative Commons, which has worked to boost the creative works available for others to build on and share legally, will discuss legal changes required to meet the new challenges of blockchain technology.

This could be a world where "smart contracts" are executed automatically by computers, potentially overhauling the way corporations function and raising the prospect of "decentralised autonomous organisations", where devices connected to the "internet of things" can execute orders and conduct payments autonomously – all over the blockchain.

So it's not only bankers and their regulators who should be taking notice. The potential application of blockchains could transform the logistics, retail or legal industries, and require a new high-tech model for corporate governance in the future.