



Reporting from Prague, Czech Republic…

Greetings from Prague.

I’ll reveal tomorrow why I’ve flown to the Czech Republic.

First things first. Yesterday, you’ll recall, we spoke about the importance of play and why cities — and the modern human — should have more fun.

We came to this conclusion while roaming around a festival in California last weekend called Symbiosis.

While hanging out at the Hacktivist Village, I ran into Andreas Antonopoulos, an information security expert, tech-entrepreneur and author. He hosts the Let’s Talk Bitcoin podcast and has become one of the most well-known and well-respected figures in the Bitcoin world.

So imagine my excitement when I realized he would be speaking to a small group of interested Bitcoiners. For your viewing pleasure, I recorded and transcribed the discussion.

No matter where you are on the Bitcoin ‘awareness curve,’ it’s a worthy read.

Read on.

Audience: How anonymous is Bitcoin?

Andreas Antonopoulos: Bitcoin has weak pseudonymity. But there is an address, a Bitcoin address.

And if you do enough statistical analysis, and if you track the relationships between all of the addresses, and you find one loose thread. Find someone, take them in for questioning, arrest them maybe, and have them divulge one Bitcoin address, you can then tug on that thread and then unravel the pseudonymity. So it’s not very good.

But it’s getting better really really fast. There are now layered networks above it that can mix together different addresses, making it impossible to keep track of who owns what. Even better, the recipe that’s being used at Bitcoin is now being used to create a plethora of alternative currencies, whose primary focus is extremely strong cryptographically-protected anonymity.

Coins like Zerocash, Monero and Dash. And these don’t necessarily compete with Bitcoin, they complement it. So you can move from one to the other very very quickly. And if you need anonymity, then you use a coin that gives you anonymity. If you need long-term value, then you use a coin which gives you long-term value.

We didn’t just build one, we built a forest of them. More than a thousand cryptocurrencies have been launched since 2009. And the pace at which they’re being created is accelerating.

How do you talk to people about Bitcoin and the blockchain without sounding like a lunatic?

OK. So, the question is, how do you channel enthusiasm about these technologies without sounding like a lunatic. I like to say that Bitcoin is not in the early adopter phase, it’s in the lunatic fringe phase. The early adopters will come later. I don’t avoid that.

When I discovered Bitcoin, I went into a state of fugue. I lost contact with reality. For a short term. Not pathologically, exactly. I started spending 18 hours a day reading, listening, reading code, writing code, everything I could absorb about Bitcoin. My obsession was so enormous. And the reason this happened to me is because I’m a geek. I’m a really really really geeky geeky geek. And I’ve done this six times in my life. I got my first computer at ten, disappeared for six months and learned how to program in three languages.

I got my first modem in 1985 and connected to a bulletin board system in Los Angeles from Athens. My father almost killed me when I got the first telephone bill. 100 hours of long distance calls in 1985 in Athens. Oops.

I got on the Internet in 1989 and sent my first email. It blew my mind. I got buried in it. I downloaded my first browser in 1992. And I can say a phrase that very few people can say. On that day, on that afternoon, I visited all of the web. All three websites. And then I visited them again to see if they had been updated. They hadn’t. And then I called all my friends over and we visited them again. And I disappeared down this rabbit hole.

And then in 2011, I first heard about Bitcoin. And my initial reaction, which is the same reaction everyone has is, Ha! Nerd money. Drugs, gambling, blah, boring.

Then I read the white paper and I went down a rabbit hole. I forgot to eat for about four months. I lost 26 pounds. Because I could not eat. People would bring me a sandwich while I was reading. I’d take one bite, set it down and it would just sit there.

I don’t try to sound not like a lunatic.

The simple answer is this: I don’t give a shit. And the reason I don’t is because I glimpsed something.

I’ve been primed through these five prior experiences, and I sounded like a lunatic. When you go around in 1992 and tell everyone you know that the Internet is going to change the world and we’re all going to be using it and everybody’s going to do their shopping and banking on it… people laugh at you.

Carl Sagan once said, “The trick to science is to know the difference between people thinking you are Bozo the Clown and you actually being Bozo the Clown.” I understand why this is important. And I tell the people around me. And the people who care to listen, here you are. Rinse and repeat.

Annoy the hell out of two or three people. Maybe they’ll get it. Maybe they won’t. Maybe one of them will understand. And when they understand they will go out and annoy the hell out of two or three people. You know what we call that in science? Exponential growth. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that within a decade, at most two, some form of cryptocurrency, possibly bitcoin, possibly something very like it, will be prevalent, mainstream and uncontroversial. And until that time comes, I am happy to be the lunatic on the stage.

What do you see in the future for Bitcoin and the blockchain?

Well, cash is on its way out. That’s obvious. Our kids’ grandchildren are going to go to cash museums for history class.

What’s happening now is we’re beginning to hit the zeitgeist. It is going to be a fight. A fight between e-coin and Bitcoin. How many of you here watch Mr. Robot? A few people. If you haven’t seen it, it’ll blow your mind. That fight is coming. And I am perfectly confident that this fight is one we win resoundingly, and it’s really a simple equation.

If you create a coin that you control, the ability to control immediately creates the responsibility to control. In our system of government, ability equals liability, responsibility, if you can control transactions, you must control transactions. You must monitor, freeze, seize and censor transactions, you must interject yourself into the communication. If the banks create a system that they control, it cannot be open. It cannot be borderless. It cannot be decentralized. It cannot be censorship-resistant. It cannot be open to participation. And it cannot be open to innovation without permission at the edges. If they control it to bit, they must control it totally. Or they go to jail.

Because the system they built is the gilded cage they now have to live in. If they build a system they don’t control, it’s a waste of time because we already have one of those. And it’s called Bitcoin. And it’s bigger, faster, better, and getting better every single day.

The magic of Bitcoin is not digital currency. The magic of Bitcoin is not the blockchain. The magic of Bitcoin is decentralization. Removing power from the center and spreading it as far as possible. It’s the same magic that makes the Internet what it is today. That gives it power and makes it uncensorable and impossible to shut down. The same thing that means you cannot unpublish something on the Internet, means that you cannot stop something that’s on Bitcoin.

And that power creates a system that has certain characteristics. It doesn’t matter if it’s called Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other systems that exist out there.

Don’t pay attention to that. Ask the following question: Is it open, decentralized, borderless, transnational, global, open access, permissionless innovation, censorship-resistant, and as anonymous as we can possibly make it?

If you answer yes to those questions, that’s the right one. And [the banks] can’t say yes to any of those questions.

What’s one thing people should do to be a part of this movement?

Use it. Don’t just read about it. Don’t just watch a video about it. Use it. Download a wallet. I will give you some Bitcoin today so you can try it out. Download a wallet and use it. And once you use it, try to understand how it is different than anything you’ve seen before. And then, spread the word.

And one day you will remember you were here today.

Thank you.

[The crowd goes wild]

Andreas Antonopoulos

Founder, Let’s Talk Bitcoin

The post Andreas Antonopoulos: The Magic of Bitcoin appeared first on Laissez Faire.

Source: http://freedombunker.com/2016/09/29/andreas-antonopoulos-the-magic-of-bitcoin/