Bitcoin was the hot topic of summer 2013. It lost some of its luster when the largest Chinese exchange, BTC, announced it was no longer taking deposits in Yuan, and China’s central bank banned financial institutions from accepting Bitcoin.
However, Bitcoin stays in the news as online merchants such as overstock.com announced that they are accepting payment in this relatively new crypto currency. Its value in US dollars has even crept back up to over $1,000 after a precipitous drop to $500.
But there is much, much more to the Bitcoin story than its rise as the currency of choice for pseudo anonymous transactions online.
I am going to show you three must-watch videos on Bitcoin. Each of them will give you pause to think.
First, to understand how Bitcoin works watch this informative video by Scott Driscoll:
As you watch this keep in mind that the entire scheme for Bitcoin was launched fully formed from the brain of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. No one knows who Satoshi is. It just happened. Now there is a large community of developers.
Next watch fellow industry analyst turned entrepreneur Andreas Antonopoulos describe why Bitcoin is disruptive.
What caught my attention was Andrea’s comment “Bitcoin is the Internet of money.” Antonopoulos thinks that Bitcoin is as big as the invention of the Internet. I am half way there.
Then watch this chat with Antonopoulos as he dives deeper into Bitcoin:
He holds nothing back!
So Bitcoin is much more that a currency. It is a distributed attestation that something happened. Imagine the impact on contracts, and proof of authorship/invention.
Finally read this specification (Ethereum: A Next-Generation Generalized Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform) of a standard that takes the ideas of Bitcoin way beyond currencies.
Etherium could make possible things like ”decentralized autonomous corporations – autonomous entities that operate on the blockchain without any central control whatsoever, eschewing all dependence on legal contracts and organizational bylaws in favor of having resources and funds autonomously managed by a self-enforcing smart contract on a cryptographic blockchain.”
Bitcoin and its growing number of spin off cyrptocurrencies are already getting a lot of attention from the tech community, many of whom have recognized the strength of decentralized trust. New trust models make new business models possible. Watch this space.