Brin joined blockchain technology leaders and researchers on a panel at Richard Branson's exclusive Blockchain Summit where he basically admitted arriving late to the technology.

"We probably already failed to be on the bleeding edge, I'll be honest", Brin said.

Brin suggested that blockchain is within the wheelhouse of X, the company's semi-secret research division. "I see the future as taking these kinds of research-y kind of out there ideas and making them real - and Google X is kind of like that", Brin said.

Brin admitted he doesn't know "a whole lot about cryptocurrency" but an amateur mining rig set-up with his son piqued his interest.

"A year or two ago my son insisted that we needed to get a gaming PC", Brin said. "I told him If we get a gaming PC we have to mine cryptocurrency. So we got an ethereum miner on there and we’ve been making a few pennies and dollars since."

Brin said: "That definitely got me interested and I started to study the technology behind it and found it to be fascinating."