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The Positive Force of Bitcoin - Gareth Williams

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Bitcoin Barcamp
Bitcoin Barcamp

Digital Currencies and the Future: Will Bitcoin change the world? Bit Trade Australia essay winner Gareth Williams presents the potential of Bitcoin to the future. This was presented at the Bitcoin Barcamp in Sydney on 15th March 2014. To view the full talk or find more presentations from Australia's first pop-up unConference on cryptocurrency innovation, go to www.bitcoinbarcamp.org

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The future of digital currency: Will Bitcoin Change the World? Bitcoin Essay Winner The positive force of bitcoin Gareth Williams
2 A New Force in the World Today Marriage of two ideas: ? Trustless cryptographic transactions ? Distributed consensus systems Open, public infrastructure: ? Network is neutral ? Politically agnostic
So, what is it capable of? Replacing troublesome, expensive, failure- and corruption- prone humans with trustless cryptographic protocols...
4 “Trustless” ? ? Removing the need for trust ? Synonymous with “failure-proof” One example: ? Cutting out the middle man in gambling ? Possible to execute a remote coin flip trustlessly over the Internet ? People could gamble against each other with zero house edge
5 The door is wide open... Hundreds of revolutionary ideas suddenly do not exist only because nobody has coded them yet. ? A P2P stock exchange ? Micropayments Bitcoin enables “permissionless innovation”
6 Lifting people out of poverty ? Foreign workers remitting money back home ? Unrestricted access to the global marketplace... ? … and to capital investment ? Levelling the playing field Bitcoin is banking for the world, accessible to anyone with a smart phone
7 Censorship Resistance ? Bitcoin payments as difficult to block as information on the internet ? Financial freedom to accompany the freedom of information we've all become accustomed to ? Wikileaks receive the majority of their donations as cryptocurrency
8 Way out there stuf The idea of a “Decentralised Autonomous Corporation” ? A company’s behaviour is governed by people following a set of rules (algorithms) to achieve clearly defined goals ? Somebody had to ask: “Could we do away with the people, and just stick with the algorithms?” ? Automating human labour at the top end of the pay scale
Could Bitcoin be superceded by something else one day?
10 Odds stacked in Bitcoin’s favour Bitcoin is, at heart, a distributed consensus system Network effects Individuals incentivised to acquire a currency appreciating in value An elegant bootstrapping mechanism, to get from from zero to worldwide use
11 THE Global Cryptocurrency Bitcoin is, and has the momentum to remain, the premier global cryptocurrency Altcoins (perhaps even national currencies?) are destined to eventually be deserted like the orphaned blocks that belong to a chain that diverges from consensus The value of a global currency to facilitate trade is hard to overstate
Bitcoin interprets a world full of splintered national currencies as a consensus problem and incentivises convergence Analogous to the internet,
You can’t stop the signal. What do you think Bitcoin could change in the world?

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The Positive Force of Bitcoin - Gareth Williams

  • 1. The future of digital currency: Will Bitcoin Change the World? Bitcoin Essay Winner The positive force of bitcoin Gareth Williams
  • 2. 2 A New Force in the World Today Marriage of two ideas: ? Trustless cryptographic transactions ? Distributed consensus systems Open, public infrastructure: ? Network is neutral ? Politically agnostic
  • 3. So, what is it capable of? Replacing troublesome, expensive, failure- and corruption- prone humans with trustless cryptographic protocols...
  • 4. 4 “Trustless” ? ? Removing the need for trust ? Synonymous with “failure-proof” One example: ? Cutting out the middle man in gambling ? Possible to execute a remote coin flip trustlessly over the Internet ? People could gamble against each other with zero house edge
  • 5. 5 The door is wide open... Hundreds of revolutionary ideas suddenly do not exist only because nobody has coded them yet. ? A P2P stock exchange ? Micropayments Bitcoin enables “permissionless innovation”
  • 6. 6 Lifting people out of poverty ? Foreign workers remitting money back home ? Unrestricted access to the global marketplace... ? … and to capital investment ? Levelling the playing field Bitcoin is banking for the world, accessible to anyone with a smart phone
  • 7. 7 Censorship Resistance ? Bitcoin payments as difficult to block as information on the internet ? Financial freedom to accompany the freedom of information we've all become accustomed to ? Wikileaks receive the majority of their donations as cryptocurrency
  • 8. 8 Way out there stuf The idea of a “Decentralised Autonomous Corporation” ? A company’s behaviour is governed by people following a set of rules (algorithms) to achieve clearly defined goals ? Somebody had to ask: “Could we do away with the people, and just stick with the algorithms?” ? Automating human labour at the top end of the pay scale
  • 9. Could Bitcoin be superceded by something else one day?
  • 10. 10 Odds stacked in Bitcoin’s favour Bitcoin is, at heart, a distributed consensus system Network effects Individuals incentivised to acquire a currency appreciating in value An elegant bootstrapping mechanism, to get from from zero to worldwide use
  • 11. 11 THE Global Cryptocurrency Bitcoin is, and has the momentum to remain, the premier global cryptocurrency Altcoins (perhaps even national currencies?) are destined to eventually be deserted like the orphaned blocks that belong to a chain that diverges from consensus The value of a global currency to facilitate trade is hard to overstate
  • 12. Bitcoin interprets a world full of splintered national currencies as a consensus problem and incentivises convergence Analogous to the internet,
  • 13. You can’t stop the signal. What do you think Bitcoin could change in the world?