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CLIENT X:FUTURE
It’s safe to assume that there is nothing new under the sun. Yet, its compelling to dream: What if there is something new, something we have not yet thought of?What would our lives be like if “new” was utterly abundant, and happened every day? Could we imagine witnessing more life enhancing innovation in one lifetime than the sum of all combined generations of humans that had ever walked the face of the earth?This Friday, I will seek to illustrate that this is happening in our lifetime, and that its becoming increasingly difficult for anyone to keep up.
For some background, the following provides a recent news story with an interesting twist about technology that is featuring consistently in the press globally right now.
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In November 2008 a whitepaper was released entitled Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System. The author’s name was Satoshi Nakamoto. A gmx.com email address was listed along with the domain www.bitcoin.org. But the real Satoshi Nakamoto has yet to be identified. The author remains a mystery, no one knows who Satoshi really is.
Bitcoin is a crypto-currency. Its original value was measured by the anonymity afforded to the spender by its encryption. The currency was made popular from use within the ‘Dark Net,’ a part of the internet that is easy to get to, at times disturbing to explore, and a part of the web becoming increasingly more popular and synonymous with innovation. Bitcoins encryption allowed users to exchange goods and services on the Dark Net via transactions hidden from authorities.However, no digital encryption is immune from two major vulnerabilities: Fool proof encryption relies on randomly generated numbers, and for a trusted party to know the key. But current binary systems (which rely on 1’s and 0’s - such as computers) are never really “random”; and humans suffer from a poorly evolved, clumsy and trusting consciousness (we get distracted, make mistakes and often share our passwords).
In some respects, the “trompe le monde” of Bitcoin’s encryption is in the simple mystery of its author – even hackers cant figure out who created Bitcoin.
Satoshi
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Hidden ValueThis year an Australian named Craig Wright claimed to be Satoshi Yakamoto. Gavin Anderson, Chief Scientist at The Bitcoin Foundation, immediately published a blog post backing up Wrights claim; “ I believe Craig Steven is the person who crafted Bitcoin.” The crypto-currency community scratched their heads. Really? Who is Craig Wright? $92 Million Dollar Portal Despite global transactions set to tip $92 Million USD this year, Bitcoin is often misunderstood. If we view Bitcoin as a currency, in the same way we view Fiat currencies, then we miss a value proposition that in many ways exceeds the value of money as we currently use it.
Bitcoin is a portal, one that allows real time transactions across international borders, with no banking holidays, 24/7, 365 with no Governmental or Banking Industry involvement. It has an international rate of exchange. This utility alone should secure continued investment as smart device use continues to eclipse desktop and more of the worlds internet users engage in app-commerce – buying on-line on their smart phones.
However, despite my considerable optimism about the future of Bitcoin, this is not the only value this technology is offering us.
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Blockchain &Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin is also a portal to an unregulated and largely unmonitored “wild west” of markets and exchanges. Thousands of currencies trade on the internet, not “public”, but publically available and easy to access, similar to penny stocks, but in smaller, easy to monitor communities. Bitcoin enables the transfer of Fiat (everyday) money to crypto-currencies on the internet and back again.
Bitcoin is publically listed. To list, it needed to provide a transparent transaction history, a kind of ‘permissionless’ (look, no need to ask) viewable ledger. By making slight alterations to the code, a remarkable innovation was created. Simple and ingenious, this piece of code has the potential to positively impact almost every area of our lives.This piece of code is called the Blockchain.
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Essentially, no human can really trust another human. Likewise, any designed system that relies on multiple “actors” or “parts” can’t perform as specified unless it has fully operational compliance from all entities.
The Byzantium Generals problem is often described in the following narrative:
A General stands outside the walls to a city with her armies amassed. The General has a number of Captains at her command, they each control an army. Some of the Captains are traitors, no one is even certain that the General herself is not a traitor.How does the General or the Captains all ensure that they receive the same attack plans without the malicious intervention of the traitors?
The Bitcoin Blockchain is currently the best known solution to this problem.
The “Byzantium Generals” Problem
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It was not another human that exposed Australian Craig Stevens. It was the Blockchain. The day after Stevens publically made his claim of being Bitcoins
founder internet security hacker Dan Kaminsky blogged “if Stevens was Nakamoto he would only
need to release a short string from the original “hash” blocks of the Bitcoin Blockchain to verify his
claim.”
As usual, Kaminsky called it: Stevens, of course, could not produce a thing, and fumbled a set of
rather implausible excuses.This turn of events illustrated the valuable strength
of the Blockchain. With an open source, permissionless ledger honestly and fairly tracking history it makes it hard for humans to deceive one
another.
ENSURING COMPLIANCE
IN A DISTRIBUTED NETWORK
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On Friday we will look at the technology that creates a Blockchain; its strengths, applications, weaknesses and where it is at today. First, however, we will have to take a quick journey into the not so distant, and the very recent past.To be clear, while I believe that Blockchain applications are one of the most effective solutions to an almost universal array of technology, business and human problems, I don’t think it will be the Bitcoin Blockchain per sae that will be the technology that will define the next mega-trend. Partly, this is due to immediate difficulties with the ‘infrastructure’, but mostly its because something much better came along.
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FUTURETo see where I think technology, people, business and currencies are heading we will have to look at a piece of technology that I never believed I would see in my lifetime. Its based on technology that Physicist Richard Feynmen says “no one understands”. We have still not figured out how to program it. We will also run over:• Art/Music/Publishing – what happened?• IPV6 and IoT• Cogtech, AI and Machine Learning• Process Automation• Digital Wallets, Currencies and Apps• Robotics• The Future of Medicine• abc.xyz• Solar, Drones and the Value in Driverless Electric
Transport
