The National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC hosted a blockchain event earlier this month where U.S. President Obama’s advisors met R3CEV consortium and three other bitcoin and blockchain industry representatives.

During the event, the panel gave an overview of the technology to the President’s Council of Advisors on science and technology. The panel also answered questions about the technology’s current and potential impact on the US economy. Also they answered questions from the advisors about blockchain technology.

R3 managing director Tim Grant, talking to coindesk.com spoke about how the President’s technology advisors want to stay informed on blockchain and distributed ledger developments. He said, "What that means remains to be seen. But it leaves no doubt that it has reached the White House."

The event witnessed participants viz. Tim Grant; Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center which is a non-profit advocacy group; Joseph Bonneau, a researcher for the Applied Crypto Group at Stanford University; and Simon Johnson, professor of entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

During the event, John Holdren, council co-chair and assistant to the president for science and technology and Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt were present.

Speaking to coindesk.com, Grant said, “I felt like I had a duty to express a balanced view of where we are in this distributed ledger community." Te advisors and members of the event were eager about the cryptographic nature of the technology.

The event also discussed about R3 Corda which is a blockchain-inspired distributed ledger platform designed and built specifically for financial markets. It discussed Lehman Brothers-style collapse of the economy and the potential role blockchain could play to minimize the likelihood of it.

R3 is an innovation firm focused on building and empowering the next generation of global financial services technology. It leads a consortium partnership with over 40 of the world's leading banks, to design and deliver advanced distributed ledger technologies to global financial markets.