The World's First Bitcoin Conference

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/the-worlds-first-bitcoin-conference/0

by rl1987 • 15 years ago

25 20 15 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

yvdriess2• 15 years ago

Special keynote lecture by Bill Cosby?

ianpurton• 15 years ago

It's an in joke. http://buttcoin.org/bitcointalk-forums-hacked-bill-cosby-pim...

jackgavigan• 15 years ago

Bitcoin's an interesting experiment but it's ultimately doomed because of the increasing "cost" (in terms of CPU cycles) of generating new bitcoins. http://goo.gl/I34VL

dissident• 15 years ago

That's actually not specifically the problem with crytocurrencies. The CPU cost is dynamic in bitcoin, and has changed in the past to reflect more or less people mining new bitcoins.

The real problem with crytocurrencies is scaling transactions. In a model where every participant has to be aware of every transaction, it is extremely difficult to imagine it (quickly) handling millions of transactions a day.

jerguismi2• 15 years ago

> The real problem with crytocurrencies is scaling transactions.

Bitcoin economy should grow pretty big before scaling really becomes a problem. I think it won't be a problem for at least 1-2 years, unless things really explode. That would mean new world order :D

Some of the scalability issues are addressed here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

zhazam• 15 years ago

I'd wager it's more the fact that its worth is effectively entirely based on its reputation.

jasonabelli2• 15 years ago

That is how all currency valuation is based.

nethsix• 15 years ago

I am a researcher and I publish papers...for the record. I am not proud of every paper that I publish. For those uninitiated with the research industry, take conferences (in general, not referring to this particular one), etc. with a pinch of salt. In some ways, conferences are the main mechanism for the organizing body to make money/achieve sustenance, committee members to embellish their resumes, researchers to add to their publication list while milking taxing-payers/profits (depending on her affiliation) to go on 'vacation' to present.

philipn• 15 years ago

Based on this, it looks like the conference organizer is quite the sleezeball: http://buttcoin.org/has-bruce-wagner-pulled-off-the-financia...

avree• 15 years ago

This is what has always confused me about Bitcoin.

How is it not a great scam?

The way I see it, the creators of Bitcoin have the lion's share of the coins. Since they're hard to mine, it's not like supply is increasing at a rate where it can offset that big initial pooling.

As a matter of fact, some of the big crashes I've seen are from mass cash-ins from people with exactly these large pools.

So, if Bitcoin actually becomes ubiquitous, as are the creator's goals, do the creators come out millionaires?

jerguismi2• 15 years ago

> How is it not a great scam?

How is it a great scam? Who is scammed here? No false information is provided, the protocol and program source code is all open source for you to examine.

Of course some bitcoin users can tell you that "I believe bitcoin value will rise tenfold in the next year", but that is not scamming. It is the same as I would say that "I believe nokia share will rise tenfold in the next month". If you believe me and buy Nokia shares, you are just stupid, not scammed :)

yvdriess2• 15 years ago

Or as some would tell you:

Bitcoins are backed by gold. Comedy gold.

polshaw• 15 years ago

>So, if Bitcoin actually becomes ubiquitous, as are the creator's goals, do the creators come out millionaires?

Billionaires, actually. It is one of my biggest problems with BTC.

Lambdanaut• 15 years ago

I don't think this is really all that much of a bad thing. It's not like they're providing a dis-service to society.

Shouldn't the creators of the first successful decentralized currency get at least some compensation?

haakon• 15 years ago

> Since they're hard to mine, it's not like supply is increasing at a rate where it can offset that big initial pooling.

The supply increases at a constant rate of 50 bitcoins every 10 minutes, regardless of the difficulty.

hippich• 15 years ago

Actually, probably first article I seen which describes correctly what bitcoin is (distributed ledger to which all parties have read access and parties having correct private keys have write access to corresponding parts of the ledger).

The World's First Bitcoin Conference

Related Stories