Chris Skinner’s new book, “ValueWeb — How fintech firms are using bitcoin blockchain and mobile technologies to create the Internet of Value,” is a couple of years in front of today’s headlines. May 2, the Wall Street Journal’s Pau Vagna, who co-wrote the leading book on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, wrote that the state of Delaware is exploring block chain to reduce the costs of record keeping for the more than one million companies incorporated there. It would be especially valuable for the startups that have avoided IPOs while attracting multiple rounds of funding, he wrote.

On May 4, Alipay and Uber announced a relationship that will let Chinese travelers book rides on Uber and pay in renminbi in the 68 countries where Uber operates. That’s an early stage of what Skinner expects to see more widely — the transfer of value sometimes automated, sometimes under a user’s precise control as she monitors balances, expected bills and incoming payments through a smartphone.

He picks out bankers who get it, and tells stories of the anonymous ones who don’t, in a great global tour of advances, and speed bumps, in the fast-paced evolution of finance.

“It is not just the internet, or mobile, or bitcoin, or blockchain, or FinTech developments that are building the ValueWeb and changing our world—it is all of them combined,” Skinner concludes.