Outline

• Why you should care, today
• Bitcoin Origins and History
• What is mining?
• What is the blockchain?
• Consensus
• Pseudonymity
• Bitcoin and the Blockchain

Weaknesses

• ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• it works. today. right now...sort of
• global reach...even for bad actors
• "immutable" ledger...but "immutable"
• objective...but it's all public
• pseudonymous...but bad actors

• it works. today. right now.
• global reach
• objective inference
• inexpensive and swift
• irreversible transactions
• consensus and security
• psuedonymous

What's the Blockchain

• it works. today. right now.
• global reach
• objective inference
• inexpensive and swift
• irreversible transactions
• consensus and security
• psuedonymous

What is mining?

It's like Sudoku

How much is the stability of your currency worth to you?

• No central banks

• No physical form

• No government backing

• Anyone can participate

• No formal identification

Why hasn't Bitcoin collapsed?

Hard to Solve, Easy to Verify

Winning has a Financial Reward

Bitcoin Mining is like Sudoku

Hash Functions

Arbitrary Text

fixed size number

Hash Functions

Mary had a little lamb, little lamb,

little lamb, Mary had a little lamb

whose fleece was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went

Mary went, Mary went, everywhere

that Mary went

The lamb was sure to go.

 

He followed her to school one day,

school one day, school one day,

He followed her to school one day,

Which was against the rules,

It made the children laugh and play,

laugh and play, laugh and play,

It made the children laugh and play,

To see a lamb at school.

 

2,474,925,876

Hash Functions

Alice had a little lamb, little lamb,

little lamb, Mary had a little lamb

whose fleece was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went

Mary went, Mary went, everywhere

that Mary went

The lamb was sure to go.

 

He followed her to school one day,

school one day, school one day,

He followed her to school one day,

Which was against the rules,

It made the children laugh and play,

laugh and play, laugh and play,

It made the children laugh and play,

To see a lamb at school.

 

184,000,478,453

Hash Functions

Elice had a little lamb, little lamb,

little lamb, Mary had a little lamb

whose fleece was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went

Mary went, Mary went, everywhere

that Mary went

The lamb was sure to go.

 

He followed her to school one day,

school one day, school one day,

He followed her to school one day,

Which was against the rules,

It made the children laugh and play,

laugh and play, laugh and play,

It made the children laugh and play,

To see a lamb at school.

 

82,944,583,940

Hash Functions

28,486,668,569

Hard to Solve, Easy to Verify

How hard can it be?

• Current Bitcoin Difficulty (1011 different possibilities)

• The number of bits on a computer hard disk (typically about 1013, 500-1000 GB)

• The number of cells in the human body (more than 1014)

• The number of neuronal connections in the human brain (estimated at 1014)

• Maximum Bitcoin Difficulty (1077 different possibilities)

• The estimated number of atoms in the observable Universe (1080)

• The lower bound on the game-tree complexity of chess (estimated at around 10120)

What is mining?

It's like Sudoku

• it works. today. right now.
• global reach
• objective inference
• inexpensive and swift
• irreversible transactions
• consensus and security
• psuedonymous

time

header

Alice -> Bob

1 BTC

.0001 fee

Reward: 25BTC

header

Alice -> Charlie

5 BTC

.00005 fee

Reward: 25BTC

header

Bob -> Alice

1 BTC

.000678 fee

Reward: 25BTC

time

Wallets do not hold your bitcoin

• it works. today. right now.
• global reach
• objective inference
• inexpensive and swift
• irreversible transactions
• consensus and security
• psuedonymous

Consensus

	Stag	Rabbit
Stag	A:4 B:4	A:2 B:0
Rabbit	A:0 B:2	A:1 B:1

Alice

Bob

A Hunting Game

Charlie

Defend

Attack

• it works. today. right now.
• global reach
• objective inference
• inexpensive and swift
• irreversible transactions
• consensus and security
• psuedonymous

Pseudonymity

Almost anonymous

not like http://zerocash-project.org

• it works. today. right now.
• global reach
• objective inference
• inexpensive and swift
• irreversible transactions
• consensus and security
• psuedonymous

why haven't you used bitcoin yet

2021 - is bitcoin dying?

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin/historical-price/

Applications

Rights & Access

• Media Payments - Ujo Music

• Rent/Share Property - Slock.it

• Media Rights - Molten

Payment Systems

• Basic money transfer
• Remittance
• MicroTransactions - ChangeTip

• Currency - Purse.io/Amazon

• Currency - OpenBazaar

• Gift Cards - Gyft

Identity

• Airbitz Edge Security

• YubiID

• Blockstack

• Medical Records - MedRec

Historical Record

• Marriage - Hudson Jameson

• Prestige - King of the Ether

• Journalism and Social Media - Steemit

Tokenizing

• The Bitcoin Experience - kotoken

• Loyalty Points - hotelblockchain

• Energy - TransActive Grid

• Property - Smart Property

Decentralized Governments

• Crowdfunding - WeiFund

• Crowdfunding - TheDAO

• Corporate - Boardroom

• Sharing Economy - INFLEKT

Transparent Markets

• Prediction Market - Augur

• Prediction Market - GroupGnosis

• General Marketplace- SafeMarket

• Hash Cracker - Firecracker

• Supply Chain - EximChain

Random Number Generators

• Gambling - Satoshi Dice

• Verifiable Random Functions - Chainlink

Malicious Applications

“There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.”

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone